


It Is Eternal Winter There

by EirianErisdar



Series: Disaster Demon Family [2]
Category: Devil May Cry
Genre: Alcoholism (mention), Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Dadgil, Dante actually hugs his bro, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, I am a medical professional and will treat these topics with respect, In which Nero goes to therapy and Vergil eventually joins him, Much fluff and happy endings in store after the initial angst, Note that these are not gratuitous or heavily emphasised, Panic Attacks, Post-Canon, Post-Devil May Cry 5, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Self-Harm (mention), The darkest night is before the dawn, Vergil just desperately wants to be a father and Nero desperately wants his father to love him, Whump, and trauma, both these boys love each other but have some serious emotional constipation to work through, they are simply mentioned symptoms of trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2021-01-12
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:34:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 43,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28152447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EirianErisdar/pseuds/EirianErisdar
Summary: Two months after a horrifying incident involving four days fighting for his life alongside Vergil against endless hordes of demons, Nero does the smart thing and goes to therapy.In which Nero desperately wishes for a father, and Vergil finally figures out how to be one.
Relationships: Dante & Nero (Devil May Cry), Dante & Vergil (Devil May Cry), Kyrie & Nero (Devil May Cry), Nero & Vergil (Devil May Cry)
Series: Disaster Demon Family [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2054715
Comments: 133
Kudos: 262





	1. It is Eternal Winter There

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, everyone. This fic can be read standalone or as a sequel to [Sweet Dreams Form a Shade](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28050291/chapters/68718954) which deals with the four-day odyssey of blood that was Nero and Vergil fighting for their lives, and the ensuing emotional fallout and brotherly and father-son fluff.
> 
> This fic deals with Nero's resulting trauma and explores he and Vergil's evolving father-son relationship. There are descriptions of panic attacks, and much briefer mentions of alcoholism and self harm, though none of the latter two are expressly shown in this fic and Nero does not participate in either of those two things.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Music for this chapter: _The Ghost on the Shore_ , Lord Huron

_“So, how would you describe your relationship with your father?”_

Face fixed in the same politely open expression he had been wearing during the session’s opening pleasantries, Nero opens his mouth–

–and closes it again.

“Uh,” he says, eloquently.

A pause, where the therapist looks at him with a calm, unassuming expression on her face and Nero forgets how to string together a coherent sentence.

The therapist makes a note in her journal before speaking again. “That’s okay,” she says. “I can sense that’s probably too big a question to cover all at once. Why don’t we start small? You mentioned your chief reason for seeking out therapy was a poor relationship with your father, and you grew up in an orphanage. Could you tell me more about that?”

Nero realises abruptly that he is kneading his hands together, fingers clenched so tight that his knuckles have blanched white. He forces his sweaty hands apart, rubs them against the rough fabric of his trousers. The cushioned chair is almost too comfortable, as though it is attempting to swallow him whole. The low, warm lighting of the room blurs its corners, makes the walls close in.

“Right,” he says, feeling naked and exposed without the reassuring weight of Red Queen on his back. “I didn’t know my father growing up. He…uh…didn’t know I existed. We only reconnected fairly recently, a few months ago.”

The therapist nods. “I see,” she says. “So you only met him earlier this year. How was that first meeting? How did it make you feel?”

Nero inhales sharply, and presses a hand to his right elbow. Phantom pain, of the flesh there tearing apart in one sharp _twist_ , bones snapping, the _pause_ where his body had almost seized up in shock before blood began to gush from the torn vessels–

_“Nero?”_

The world turns cold, the wood-paneled walls fading to grey. There is a vase of blue roses on the low table before him, Nero realises, and the bar of pure white light from the window at street-level near the ceiling of the room grows brighter, lancing diagonally down over his shaking right fist to line each perfect, cyan blossom with gold, moisture tumbling down the glass vase like a crystalline tears.

And Nero just–

He can’t–

His mouth is moving without him commanding it to. “I’m sorry,” he says, his own voice coming from somewhere distant, beyond the ringing in his ears. “I- I need to reschedule, if that’s okay.”

“Of course. Feel free to call the office at any–”

Nero stumbles past the therapist and out the door, through the tiny, airless reception, up the flight of narrow steps, at the top of which daylight pours glaringly bright from the glass-fronted door–

Nero bursts out into the street, the shock of cold wintry air seizing his lungs and knocking what little breath he has left from his chest. He takes four staggering steps around the corner of the building and slides down in the recessed shade of an alleyway, fighting the gasping breaths that tear from his throat as he blinks the darkness from the edges of his vision.

He is grasping his right elbow so hard that there are purpling bruises forming around the joint, blood seeping from under his fingernails where they have grown long and cyan with crackling demon energy and speared through his winter coat.

Nero buries his face into his knees and jams his right fist into his mouth to stop whatever is fighting to come out of him. It could be a scream. It could be his breakfast. It could be his guts, the whole bloody mess of it, like his cooling blood on his garage floor, or his father’s shredded, torn arm in Nero’s hands, the _give_ of bone under his hands as he pulls the jagged bones straight, Vergil’s agonized howl spearing hot and horrible by his ear–

Nero gasps in a breath that shudders through him, tears prickling at the corners of his vision–

He comes back to himself fully an indeterminate time later, shivering in cold sweat, the filthy alley wall pressed to his back, tear tracks drying on his aching face.

Nero pushes up his right sleeve with a still-trembling left hand and finds his elbow quite whole, skin unbroken, any bruises long healed over by his demon powers. He flexes the fingers of his right hand. They feel – not quite his, but not entirely _not_ a part of him, either.

Nero scrubs his face with a shaking hand, pushes himself upright.

A moment, where he attempts to understand what has just occurred, and finds himself so terrified that it _did_ occur that he decides to push it to the back of his mind instead.

Except that he _can’t_ , and he can’t go home in his current state either, or Kyrie would immediately notice something is off and he’d have to–

–He’d have to explain, and go through _that_ all again.

“Okay,” Nero whispers into the cold, late morning December air. “Okay.”

Across the street, beside a shop so covered in Christmas decorations it looks like someone has vomited green and red tinsel all over it, is a phone booth.

Arms wrapped around himself, Nero stumbles across the street, ignoring the strange looks passersby give him, and locks himself into the blessedly private, small space of the phone booth.

He fumbles for change. The coins clatter and scrape against the coin slot, shuddering with his bloodless fingers, and Nero grits his teeth as the coins slide in one by one, achingly slow.

Nero has keyed in half the number to Devil May Cry shop before he realises what he has done and slams the handset so hard back into the receiver he is surprised it does not break.

He almost called his father.

The father who had ripped his arm from its joint – but also, eight weeks ago, had stood in front of him in the face of endless tides of demons; had taken a blade in the chest and one in the the stomach to save Nero’s life, had held Nero close when Nero had fallen, exhausted, and who had smiled up at him with pride in his darkening eyes as blood seeped out of Vergil’s mouth, Red Queen in his gut–

Nero leans against the grimy fiberglass wall as the clatter of coins falling into the change box fills the tiny booth.

“Shit,” he mutters, a bizzare urge to laugh welling up inside him, drawing a single fresh tear to run down his left cheek.

He scrapes the coins from the change box, enters another number.

 _“Devil Maaaaay Cry.”_ Nico’s drawl filters through the phone, tinny and compressed by distance, and Nero nearly collapses with relief at hearing a voice that is not his own.

“Nico,” he whispers.

_“Oh hey, skidmark!”_

“Hey,” he says, feeling a savage twist of victory as he manages to keep his voice even. “Do you have anything for me?”

_“Whaaat, demon huntin’? Hold up, lemme see.”_

Nero curls the phone closer to himself in the crook of his neck and screws his eyes shut, fighting to control his breathing.

_“You okay there, Nero? You’re breathing kinda hard.”_

“Went– running,” Nero says, stumbling over the word. “Wanted to blow off some steam.”

Nico’s laugh bites into his ear. _“Nothin’ like kickin’ demon ass to blow off that steam! Yeah, there’s small reports of demon activity not too far from where I am. Want me to pick you up at your place?”_

“Nah, I’m out,” Nero says, the humour in his voice feeling foreign and strained even to his own ears. “Could you swing by my place and pick up my gear? Tell Kyrie I’ll be back for dinner.”

 _“Sure!”_ Nico says brightly, and Nero sags a little with relief.

He rattles off the address of his current location, and Nico signs off with laughing challenge that almost makes the world feel normal again.

Nero steps out of the phone booth. He stares across at the opposite building and the alleyway beside it, shivers once, and turns to head towards a nearby park to wait for Nico.

(:~:)

Nero has managed to get his hands to stop shaking by the time Nico’s van screeches across three lanes of traffic and skids to a stop double-parked at the edge of the pavement.

Nero jogs through the scattered groups of people enjoying the midday sun at the park edge, eyes glued to the neon blue _Devil May Cry_ letters on the side of the van. Nico leans through the passenger window and waves at him, and Nero manages a ghost of his usual smile in return until a voice rings out beside him and stops him in his tracks.

“Hey, aren’t you _that_ guy?”

Nero swivels to find two young men roughly his age staring excitedly at him.

“Yeah, you’re that demon hunter!” One of them says, taking another step closer than puts him within arm’s reach, oblivious to the way Nero pointedly steps back.

Nero narrows his eyes. He has a bad feeling he knows where this is going.

“The one who fought demons four days straight in that dome thing two months ago!” the first speaker’s friend is saying now, nearly shoving his friend aside in his haste to get closer to Nero. “Watched the whole thing live online. Gotta say, I was really moved when your dad took that second sword for you. He must love you so much.”

Nero’s mouth is suddenly incredibly dry; he tastes the iron of dried blood, remembers the gleam of Red Queen in the starlight as the goliath plucked it out of the air and plunged it into his father’s unresisting stomach.

A hand lands on his shoulder, and Nero blinks, breath hitching in his chest.

The stranger squeezes the hand he has on Nero’s shoulder. “Good to see you’re doing fine. No lasting damage, like a straight up boss. You do autographs?”

Nero feels that urge to laugh boil up within him again, and his hands curl into fists at his sides.

“Hey, you two,” a comfortingly familiar voice drawls over Nero’s shoulder, “Get lost.”

 _“Whoo-whee,_ pretty lady– _argh!”_

The latter is courtesy of Nico’s steel-toed cowboy boots slamming into the speaker’s nether regions.

Nero feels a tug on his left elbow, and follows Nico into the van automatically. The van door shuts behind them both, and, faced with the familiar questionably-clean surfaces and cigarette-scented upholstery of the van, Nero allows himself to slowly, carefully uncurl, slumped on the long padded seat and running a hand over his face.

Nico is looking at him curiously. “You uh, okay there?”

Nero freezes.

“Yeah,” he says, heart hammering in his throat. “I’m fine.”

Nico stares at him for a moment, then fishes in her pocket. “Okay,” she says, unwrapping a piece of gum and sticking it in her mouth, chewing noisily. “So, you were out for a run, huh?” She looks pointedly at his feet.

Nero nods. “Yeah, I was–” he stares down at his feet, in their ratty combat boots.

Nico snaps her gum loudly. “Mm-hm.”

Nero suddenly feels very warm in his full winter coat, covered collar to knee and entirely not suited for _running_. “I’m an adult,” he snaps. “I can do what I want.”

“Yup,” Nico says, popping the _p_ as she slides into the driver’s seat and pushes the van into gear. “Keep ‘em on, I ain’t pryin’ or anythin’. Your gear’s in the back.”

“Thank you,” Nero says testily, getting to his feet as the van begins to move, loose mechanical parts clattering across the workstation, cups sliding across the table.

The feel of the familiar hooded coat and single half-finger glove grounds him as he pulls them on, takes him a little further away from the alleyway and the phantom pain in his elbow. It gets even better, a little closer to _normal_ , when he allows his right arm to dissolve to pure demon energy and slots a Gerbera into his elbow.

Some small part of him wonders if it is wrong that he should occasionally feel so disconnected to his actual, human limb and so comfortable with these artificial weaponised arms.

But then his eye falls on Red Queen, gleaming where it rests against the table, and he does the same thing he has done every time he has seen it since he returned to demon hunting two weeks ago: wrap gloved fingers around the familiar grip, and sling it on his back before his mind can process the memory of the same blade embedded in his father’s stomach, Vergil’s blood seeping into the dirt at Nero’s knees.

“You ate lunch yet, shorty?” Nico calls from the front of the van.

“Nah, I’m–” Nero pauses, considers the nauseous emptiness of his stomach. “I’m not hungry,” he says, and feels his stomach settle with the knowledge he will not have to force it to accept food, not when the mere thought of eating reminds him of the rancid taste of stomach acid in his throat as he retched in the alley.

“Suit yourself,” Nico says easily.

Then Nico is filling the van’s small space with her usual easy banter and Nero falls into their usual patterns with relief, collapsing into the passenger seat and kicking his boots up on the dashboard.

It is enough, for the moment, to take his mind off the dome, therapy, and the damned mess that is his relationship with his father.

(:~:)

It is pushing eight in the evening by the time Nero spears Red Queen through one last Empusa’s head and revs the grip once, blasting the Empusa’s skull apart to the sound of Nico’s very vocal whoop.

“Yeah! That’s what we’re talkin’ about!” Nico yells, sticking an arm out of the driver’s side window to wave at him. The window and the entirety of the front of the van is stained filthy red and black from demon parts where Nico had enthusiastically assisted Nero’s hunt by using the van as a battering ram.

Nero barks a laugh as he clears Red Queen of gore with a flourish and returns it to his back, a familiar weight. “And _this_ was afew small reports? Seriously?”

“Nothin’ we couldn’t handle,” Nico says, waving a hand impatiently. “C’mon, get in. I’m hungry.”

Nero feels his stomach clench. It is only now that he recognises the murmur of hunger there where it had been hidden by the exhilaration of battle. Demon hunting had been easy, grounding; allowed him utter control. It had been enough to almost make him forget his hunger – the fact he has not eaten since a rushed breakfast that morning.

“I’ll drop you off,” Nico says, as she guns the accelerator to send the van bouncing over the multitude of demon parts littering the street.

“Stay for dinner. Kyrie wouldn’t mind,” Nero offers, sliding into the passenger seat with contented exhaustion, popping out the strain in his shoulders. He is tired enough now that he is hopeful for a dreamless night’s sleep – a sleep so deep that even the blue-black light of the dome cannot enter his dreams.

Nico laughs bright and loud. “You know me. I’d never turn down free food,” she says, and Nero grins as he leans on his open window and sets his chin down on his crossed arms, watching the dark shore of Fortuna fly past in the sharp winter air.

(:~:)

Dinner with Kyrie and Nico holds a warm familiarity that is comfortingly normal; Nico’s boisterous yelling and Kyrie’s crystalline laughter surround him, allows him to pick through perhaps half of what is on his plate before his stomach tightens below his ribs and he puts down his fork.

“Nero?” Kyrie says, a question in her soft brown gaze.

“No, no, it’s not the food,” Nero says hurriedly, running a hand through his shower-damp hair. “I’m just…too tired to eat.”

Kyrie’s smile at him is all understanding and unpresuming love, and the gnawing in Nero’s stomach turns to heavy guilt. “That’s okay,” Kyrie says, placing a hand on his right arm, which suddenly turns the arm _his_ once more, real and warm and flesh and bone. “You should get some rest.”

“Yeah,” Nico chips in, downing the rest of her whisky sour in one go. “It’s only been, what, two weeks since you’ve been out huntin’ again? Get your beauty sleep.” She turns to Kyrie. “Thanks for lettin’ me stay the night. You make some damn good whisky sours.”

Nero allows the conversation and laughter to wash over him, sipping at his own drink – stronger than Nico and Kyrie’s, to account for his demon biology. The buzz of the alcohol spreads artificial warmth down to his stomach, settles it, calms the telltale shake of his right hand.

By the time he has drained his drink, he feels normal enough to bat away Kyrie’s protestations that he should go to bed, and instead settles beside her at the kitchen sink, taking comfort in the rush of running water and dish soap and Kyrie’s steady presence at his side.

Nero feels Kyrie’s head drop to his shoulder as he hands her a plate to dry, and he presses a kiss in return to the top of her head and leans his cheek into her orange-red hair. The radio on the counter is playing something soft, and Nico has long since disappeared upstairs, so it is just the two of them swaying gently to the music and the clinking of the dishes and quiet hiss of the water in the sink.

“How did it go this morning?” Kyrie murmurs into Nero’s shoulder.

The buzz of the whisky still tingles under Nero’s skin, allows him to reach for the next plate without shattering it.

“It was– difficult,” he manages. “I didn’t complete the session.” The words slip over his lips, a mere shadow of the true events of that morning, but he cannot bring himself to tell her the full truth, for fear of the memories overwhelming him.

Kyrie’s hand clasps his, just for a moment, as he hands her another plate. “That’s okay,” she says. “I’m proud of you for trying.”

Nero is glad her head is on his shoulder, then, so she cannot see his face, and he has to blink away the sudden moisture gathering at the corners of his eyes.

“I’m going to go back,” he forces the words out of his throat, past the lump of guilt stuck there. “I’m going to keep trying. You were right, I– I need it. The therapy.”

Kyrie’s lips press softly against his cheek. “Thank you.”

The kindness nearly undoes Nero right there and then, and he is grateful that the remaining dishes take only a few moments, then it is a simple matter of getting ready for bed and closing his eyes, Kyrie’s soft breathing a calm rhythm to his left.

(:~:)

Red.

A pool of crimson blood, congealing around his hands and knees where they curl into the ground. His right hand, claw-tipped and lined with veins of glowing blue.

His Devil Bringer.

Nero looks up from his hands, breath stuttering in his chest, and feels his heart rocket up into a thrumming scream in his chest.

 _“Nero,”_ Vergil gasps, more blood pouring out over his lips with each choking breath, joining the scarlet river that drips ever-so-slowly from the around Red Queen’s blade, buried to the hilt in his stomach.

Nero’s breathing quickens to a desperate, sawing wheeze that joins the thundering of his pulse in his ears, a deafening crescendo that threatens to crest over him like a wave and smash him into nothingness.

“Ne…ro,” Vergil whispers, blue eyes somehow leeching colour, turning more lifeless and pale with every passing second. His half-gloved hand twitches where it lays drenched in blood, seeking out Nero plaintively. There is an expression of such mingled sorrow and love on his features that Nero feels himself shake.

Nero stifles a sob, crawls closer to his father on hands and knees, reaching out for his father with his right hand, the blue-black claws of the Devil Bringer slipping over Vergil’s cold fingers–

Vergil’s fingers reverse blindingly fast to clench ice-cold around Nero’s wrist, Vergil’s other hand flying up to wrap vice-like around Nero’s elbow.

Nero’s eyes widen, and his lips open to scream–

–That same look of sorrow and love fixed on his face, Vergil’s hands _twist_ –

–And Nero shudders awake, a silent scream frozen on his lips.

He lays there for a moment in the silvery moonlight pouring in through the window, shivering in cold sweat, eyes wide, listening for the threat he knows must be there.

Nothing.

Kyrie’s breathing is slow and even behind him, and Nero calms minutely. He has gotten better at this – waking from his nightmares without disturbing her. It is enough that she has grown obviously happier recently, commenting that he is sleeping better with one of her most beautiful smiles.

Nero has not the heart to correct her.

A needling, aching pain makes itself known in his right elbow, and Nero fights to exhale slow and quiet as he unclenches his left hand from around the joint. A glance down at his right elbow reveals five crescent-shaped furrows in the exact shape of his left fingernails, already healing over with a flicker of blue demon energy.

Nero flexes the aching joints of his left hand, and notes with a jolt of fear that there are small, dotted bloodstains where his elbow had pressed into the sheets before it had healed completely.

He grits his teeth and pulls his pillow lower, covering the drying blood. He would have to fake a small accident with their coffee in the morning, and then get the sheets off the mattress and into the machine without Kyrie noticing the blood.

Nero sits up carefully, swinging his legs over the side of the bed, and curls into himself, pressing both hands to his face.

Kyrie’s breathing is calm, measured, at peace.

Nero cannot afford to break that peace.

Shoulders still twitching from the occasional shudder, Nero pads barefoot out into the hall, down the hall and stairway, and into the kitchen. He sits at the counter, listens to the ticking of the kitchen clock, the humming of the refrigerator in the silence.

His father’s face still flashes before him every time he closes his eyes, Vergil’s face holding that desperate mix of pride and love and sorrow that he had pushed into Nero’s name during those last moments in the dome, when they both had thought death had come for them at last. And then they had sat together in the garden a few days later, a slow calm between them, and his father had said that he would have done it all again for Nero, if Vergil had to.

In a way, he misses that version of his father the most – raw, messy-haired, wrapped in flannel pyjamas and a woolen throw and barefoot in the garden, close enough to touch – who had let him sleep with his head on his father’s shoulder, and had offered to train him with such earnestness.

But this is the same Vergil that had torn his arm from its joint in the dark confines of his garage, that had staggered away into a portal while Nero’s screams echoed after him.

Nero knows, with a disjointed sense of logic, that Vergil had not known that Nero was his son at that point in time.

But it does not make it better.

The kitchen clock strikes four, and Nero jolts so hard at the sudden sound that he nearly tips over a glass.

Then his gaze falls on the liquor cabinet, where Nico had helped put back the whisky after dinner – and he remembers the calming buzz of the alcohol in his stomach, how it had steadied his hands enough that they did not shake when Kyrie grasped his fingers as they washed the dishes.

Nero pushes himself off the counter with hands that are not his, moves over to the cabinet with legs that are quite steady but seem to step without him ordering them to, and slides open the cabinet.

He and Kyrie’s meagre collection of bottles stare back at him – mostly gifts from Kyrie’s friends or the opera house, and mostly unopened.

Nero’s nerveless fingers wrap around the same bottle of whisky that Kyrie had used to mix their drinks at dinner, pulls it out. It is heavier than he thought it would be.

He carefully pours himself the same amount that Kyrie had used to make his drink. No more, no less.

He takes one tentative sip first, and when the burn of it over his tongue and down his lips warms his icy limbs at last, downs the rest of the serving in one go.

Then he very deliberately puts the whisky bottle back in the cabinet, rinses out the glass, and heads back upstairs. The alcohol suffuses him with warmth, stops the tremor in his icy hands, makes them almost his own again as he slides back into bed, watching Kyrie smile in her sleep with the same wonder he first felt in his chest when he first realised she loved him, years ago.

He sleeps in disjointed, broken fits and starts for the rest of the night, but the heaviness of the alcohol in his empty stomach holds the dreams at bay, ephemeral whispers beyond the borders of his mind, where a part of him bleeds forevermore at his father’s side, the blue-lit dome enclosing them both.

(:~:)

Nero books a session with the therapist that very afternoon.

He had eaten breakfast under Kyrie’s gentle cajoling, but then she had gone to a practice session at the opera house and Nero had found himself so jittery with the thought of stepping into the therapist’s office again that he had no stomach for lunch.

Nero descends the stairs to the therapist’s office with his stomach as empty as a pit, mouth drying as the daylight fades behind him and he enters the stifling heat of the reception. Some part of him registers that the assistant at the counter is wearing a turtleneck and the room must not quite be as hot as he thought, but even with his coat and scarf off Nero feels his palms beginning to sweat.

The door opens.

“Nero? Come on in,” the therapist says, offering him a bright, unjudgmental smile.

Nero moves in automatically, sits in the too-soft armchair, resists the urge to start kneading his hands together.

The therapist sits down opposite, opens her mouth to speak–

Nero cuts her off with words of his own. “I’m sorry about yesterday,” he says, the words tripping out of him in one great rush. “I was– I didn’t feel well.”

To his surprise, the therapist favours him with a brilliant smile. “There is no need to apologise,” she says. “You would not be the first person sitting in that chair who had to leave a session early when it became too overwhelming. You should be proud of yourself for coming back.”

Nero blinks at her then, and notes suddenly that the vase of blue roses is gone from the low table between them. Instead, a cup of tea rests on a woven coaster by his knees, silvery steam curling into the air.

“Now, you don’t have to talk about what happened yesterday,” the therapist says calmly. “Unless you wish to, of course.”

“I–,” Nero hesitates. “I think I have to,” he says, eventually. “I think there are some– some things I have to tell you. So that you don’t– don’t end up saying things that might. Uh. Make me do _that._ Again.”

The therapist regards him with an even gaze. “Okay,” she says. “But please don’t force yourself. Stop if you’re feeling uncomfortable.”

“Okay,” Nero breathes.

Silence for a long moment, afternoon sunlight filtering through the high window above, Nero picking at the woven green cover of the armchair.

Where even to begin?

“–I think you know who I am?” he starts awkwardly. “My family, I mean.”

“Yes,” the therapist says, with a rueful smile. “But only as much as anyone born and bred on Fortuna would know.”

The Order of the Sword, and their worship of Sparda.

Nero nods jerkily. “Yeah so – so Sparda’s my grandfather. He had twin sons, Vergil and Dante, but something happened when they were children that separated them and killed their mother. I’m not sure what. Dante refuses to tell me.”

The therapist makes a note in her journal, and Nero tamps down on the urge to peer over in an attempt to see what it is.

“Anyway, from what I know, my father came to Fortuna when he was – I don’t know, it must have been somewhere around eighteen or nineteen – met my mother, and left,” Nero says, the words coming smoother now, a repetition of what he had been told since his childhood days at the orphanage. “My mother died after I was born. I don’t know how. I ended up at the orphanage.”

The therapist listens attentively as Nero covers his childhood, Kyrie and Credo, how he first met Dante and the events that had led up the destruction of the Hell Gate in Fortuna.

“And I ended up thinking Dante was my father for a while, you know?” Nero says, hands curled around his cooling cup of tea. “Nearly every sentient demon I met kept going on about the blood of Sparda in me. And I sort of hated him for a while after. How he never admitted it but let me keep the Yamato, because I was family.”

“The Yamato,” the therapist says. “That’s your father’s–”

“My father’s sword, yeah,” Nero says, and clenches his hands tighter around the ceramic of the cup, because they have finally covered enough of the messed-up history of the Sparda family that he finally has to face one of his worst memories.

“My father was trapped in Hell for a long time,” he says, and places the cup back on the low table, because part of him is afraid his right hand will grow cyan claws and shatter it. “I think it was against his will. He and Dante don’t like talking about it. But when he came back he…he was close to death. And the only way he had to survive was...was–”

He stops, then, because he has to put _that_ into words, and his right elbow is aching again, and his right hand numb and _not his_ –

“Nero,” the therapist is saying calmly, “Let go of your elbow.”

Nero sucks in a breath that clears the spots from his vision, and looks down at his right elbow. His left hand has dug into the skin again, red welts already beginning to form, but the skin is yet unbroken.

“Sorry,” Nero says, forcing his stiff left fingers to open.

“Does that happen often?” the therapist is saying, while Nero stares at his elbow, the reddened skin fading his usual pale instantaneously.

“Occasionally,” Nero finds himself saying.

“Okay,” the therapist nods.

Nero finds himself absurdly gratified that she does not choose this moment to drill into this.

“So, uh,” he continues, feeling his pulse begin to race again. “My father needed a way to survive. I won’t go into the semantics but he needed the Yamato, which by that point had formed my right arm. My Devil Bringer.”

To the therapist’s credit, she only blinks once at this and then waits for him to continue.

Nero feels the electricity start up within his core, flare along his limbs, until he cannot stand it anymore and rises to his feet, pacing the length of the room.

“It…it was sunset,” he says, steps quickening as though he could outrun the memory of the garage that day, with the golden light filtering over the growing pool of his own blood. “I was in our garage helping Nico, our friend, with her van. Then Kyrie called us in for dinner, and Nico went first and I stayed behind to finish up–” Nero halts in place, left hand drifting towards his right elbow before he catches himself and holds his left wrist with his other hand.

“I remember– I remember the silhouette of him,” he says, and runs his hands through his hair just to give them something to do. “Hooded cloak against the setting sun, ragged breathing. I thought he wanted food,” he gasps in a breathy laugh, wheezing against the panicked beat of his heart in his throat. “I invited him in for dinner. But when I turned around again he was staring at my arm.”

“And then?” the therapist says, something like an inkling of understanding dawning on her face.

“And then he grabbed by arm and _twisted–_ ” Nero breaks off, because he feels his gorge rising, like it did in the alleyway when he _could not stop shaking_ –

He comes back to himself a short while later, crouched on his knees by the low table, a throw around his shouldler, a fresh cup of hot tea in his hand.

Nero blinks up at the therapist, who sits quite composedly beside him, hand on his left wrist to prevent him from grabbing his elbow.

“Are you back with us?” she says, gently.

“Yeah,” Nero croaks, feeling watery and shaky and not at all fully present, but not about to fall apart, at least.

“Do you want to continue?”

Nero nods.

“Okay,” she says, returning to her seat and tapping her pen against her journal, “That was your first memory of your father?”

Nero nods, and feels the urge to laugh bubble up inside him again. When you put it like _that,_ they really _are_ messed up, his father and him.

“Okay,” the therapist says. “Then what changed?”

“What do you mean?” Nero says, slowly straightening out his aching joints and collapsing into the armchair again.

The therapist shrugs an easy shoulder. “Something had to have happened. If my father did that to me I’d have had nothing to do with him for the rest of my life. You’re here, as you said, because you want to better your relationship with your father. So what changed?”

Feeling raw and scraped out from within, Nero leans back in the armchair, stares at the ceiling, and tells her about V.

He tells her about his father’s humanity, his cutting wit, the glorious exhilaration of fighting together; the way V pressed on even as his body crumbled around him, and how in a way, the two of them could have been friends.

Then Urizen, and _Vergil_ thanking him before disappearing _again,_ then the top of the Qliphoth and he and his father doing their level best to come as close as possible to killing each other without actually doing so.

By the end of this particular part of the tale the therapist is looking at him with intense scrutiny over hands curled under her chin.

“You stabbed each other,” the therapist says, impassively.

“I– yeah,” Nero says. “I mean, I was yelling at him for being an asshole, and he was doing that whole _power_ shtick he had going on then, and we stabbed each other. But we were both in full demon form so we healed over pretty quickly. It wasn’t the–” _It wasn’t the worst part of the fight._

“I see.”

“He and Dante came back from Hell after like, a month?” Nero says, “And I don’t know if he they had a little heart-to-heart in Hell or something, but my father’s been…decent, after that. Like he wanted to know me.”

“But he didn’t apologise,” the therapist says.

“What? Oh,” Nero says, almost surprised at the question. “Uh. He did seem to regret what happened. But he didn’t apologise, no.”

“Hm,” the therapist murmurs, pen flying cross her journal. “Go on.”

“So, uh, we’d been figuring things out for a little while, until two months back. When– when the dome happened.”

“Ah,” the therapist says.

“Do I– do I need to explain the dome?” Nero hazards. Sudden fear rises up within him – the whole four-day ordeal had been livestreamed almost in its entirety on every news network on Fortuna and the mainland, and it terrifies him that someone should have seen the most vulnerable part of him like this, when he and his father had fought so desperately to survive alongside each other.

“No,” the therapist says. “I know the general background. It _was_ on the news for several days, though I made a point of not watching the details. I thought it disrespectful.”

A pause.

“Thank you,” Nero says, leaning back and closing his eyes. “It’s just…there was a moment. In the dome. My father took a greatsword to the chest for me, and I lost control, and when I came back to myself I called him _dad_ for the first time. I don’t even know why. It just slipped out.”

“And how did he respond?”

“He said something. A quote, I think. _Sweet dreams, form a shade._ Then he stood up and moved between me and the demon. And, and I think,” Nero blinks away moisture at the corners of his eyes, blurring the ceiling, “I think he was trying to tell me he loved me.”

“Sweet dreams, form a shade,” the therapist recites, “O’er my lovely infant’s head.”

Nero raises his head from the back of the armchair abruptly. “What did you say?”

“William Blake,” the therapist says plainly. _“A Cradle Song.”_

_Sweet dreams, form a shade, o’er my lovely infant’s head._

Nero runs the words over his mind twice, thrice. Sits up, hands curling in the throw around his shoulders. “Was he…was he trying to say he would protect me?” he mumbles, feeling a slow heat building behind his sternum, like he has swallowed a rising sun.

“I don’t know,” the therapist says. “You will need to ask him yourself.”

Nero jumps to his feet again, throw abandoned, feeling too warm even in his long-sleeved shirt. “There was something else,” he says, and feels the words rush up out of him again, unstoppable, fueled by fire. “Near the end, when the goliath was towering over us, and we were both too exhausted to stand, my father said _If thought is life and strength and breath,_ and then took my sword and stood over me, even when he was swaying. I thought – I thought he was speaking about power then. I was too tired to think–”

“One moment,” the therapist murmurs, tapping on a tablet. “Ah, here. _If thought is life, and strength and breath, and the want_ _of thought is death._ ” She looks up at him, and Nero stares at her, chest heaving. “ _The Echoing Green,”_ she supplies. “William Blake.”

“Was he saying–” Nero whispers, fists clenched at his sides, feeling as though the roof has split open and the galaxy is rushing in. “–Was he saying he would die for me?”

“Perhaps,” the therapist says, and tilts her head at him. “How would that make you feel?”

“I–” Nero looks away, with a strangled feeling in his throat that he slowly realises is mingled joy and terror. Joy, because if Vergil had really meant those things, then Vergil must care for him far more than Nero had previously assumed – and terror, because he cannot bear to lose his father again, not even this jackass who had taken his arm from him.

The memory of Red Queen piercing his father’s gut shakes him to his core.

Vergil had not dodged the blade. Nero had thought then that it was because Vergil was too exhausted to do so, but now…

A long, long silence, where Nero collapses back into his chair, shock at this new discovery thundering through him, and no matter how he tries to speak further, cannot get the words out past the sheer enormity of the revelation.

The therapist snaps her book shut. “Well,” she says, “I think you’ve made excellent progress today, Nero. You should call your father. I think you deserve to ask him what he meant in person.”

“What?” Nero jolts. “But I–” He stops, then, and blinks up at the window above, through which golden-orange sunset light is filtering.

Has he been speaking that long?

“We will call you with a new appointment for next week,” the therapist says. “You should be proud of yourself, Nero. Get some rest.”

Nero nods. He stands, and feels suddenly exhausted, scraped raw, as though he has been battling demons all afternoon instead of speaking.

The therapist gives him a small, understanding smile. “Rest,” she says, and Nero forgets to thank her as he takes his coat and scarf from the waiting assistant and tumbles out into the golden dusk light before he registers what has happened.

He watches the Christmas lights on the shop opposite flicker to life in as the sun slips towards the horizon across the park, and looks up to the darkening sky just as the first snowflake begins to fall.

Standing in the fading orange light, Nero breathes in the snowfall, feeling the cold air wash in and out of him.

He realises, with a somewhat chagrined smile, that he is feeling properly hungry for the first time in a long while.

(:~:)

Nero goes to sleep that night exhausted, with a good meal in him – his first full, proper meal in two days – and falls almost instantly asleep.

He had hoped that the food and the revelations of the day would give him a dreamless sleep.

He had been wrong.

Nero snaps awake as though he has been struck, acid bubbling up from his full stomach to hammer against his lips.

He can somehow still smell the iron tinge of blood from his dream, gushing out from the stump of his right elbow, his father glassy-eyed beside him in the same pool of blood, an open wound in Vergil’s chest where his heart should be.

Nero looks down at his right elbow, and the hand he has clutched around it.

At least he seems to have avoided breaking skin, this time.

His hands are shaking. He needs to sleep.

Head floating, arms nerveless, Nero pads softly from the room, wanders like a wraith down into the kitchen, and has a hand on the liquor cabinet door and another on the bottle of whisky before he realises what he is doing.

Nero’s hand spasms on the bottle, sending the amber liquid sloshing within.

He lets go of the bottle like it has burned him and slams the cabinet shut, backpedaling until his hip hits the kitchen counter. Nero looks down at himself, and then at the liquor cabinet.

What had he been _doing?_

“Shit,” he whispers.

He had heard stories, back when he was a member of the Order of the Sword. Stories of Knights who had seen such horrors in battle that they could not sleep at night without a bottle in hand, could not hold a sword steady without a glass of liquor in their stomachs.

Nero feels a new terror rise up within him now, and he moves into the hallway, away from the lure of the liquor cabinet and its siren call of easy sleep.

In the hall, in the soft grey darkness, he leans against the wall, head in his hands. He wishes he were anywhere but here, alone in this empty hallway with a scream building in his throat, Kyrie sleeping peacefully above. He wishes he were in the garden, with the setting sun warming him, and his father by his side, with none of the weight of their history between them.

He wants– he needs–

Nero fumbles for the hall phone, dials a number with shaky fingers. He regrets the decision almost the moment he presses the last number.

“Don’t pick up, don’t pick up, don’t pick up,” he whispers–

 _“Devil May Cry,”_ a singsong voice says, and Nero’s chest seizes from the mixture of relief and disappointment – relief that it is not his father, and disappointment because of the same. He almost feels faint.

“Dante,” Nero whispers.

 _“Hey, it’s my favourite nephew!”_ Dante says, the delight evident in his voice. _“What’s up? Isn’t it sort of late over there?”_

And there is another thing that Nero struggles with at times – how Dante shows his love with such free abandon, and while Vergil furls himself under so many layers that sometimes Nero wishes he could take a sledgehammer to that core just to hear Vergil speak without weighing the words.

“It’s nothing,” Nero says, leaning his head into the coolness of the wall to stop the hot ache growing between his eyes. “I just– I was wondering if there was anything we could take to sleep better. Demon biology and all.”

Dante barks a laugh. _“Tough luck, kid. Nothing for it. I used to train until I felt like my face was going to fall off or drink until I blacked out– Wait.”_ Dante cuts himself off abruptly, dawning concern in his voice. _“Nero? Are you having problems sleeping? Don’t do what I just said. Do NOT do the stupid things that your Uncle Dante used to do.”_

“No, no,” Nero says hurriedly. “I’m just. I mean. Maybe? Occasionally. I’m doing much better than I was two months ago.”

A bald faced lie, but Nero feels something shriveling up within him at the thought of admitting such a weakness, when his father has been doing so well, having gone through the same thing Nero has.

 _“Hey, you need a snuggle buddy?”_ Dante is saying now. _“Didn’t ask since you have Kyrie, but your old man and I had trouble sleeping for the first few days until we slept in the same bed.”_

Nero almost chokes on his surprise. “My dad needed you there when he was sleeping?” The very idea of his father being vulnerable enough to admit he needed something like that is staggering. Then, close on the heels of shock comes a creeping jealousy. Nero wishes so much in this moment to rest safe in his father’s arms that he feels an ache in his chest at the very thought of it.

 _“Yeah!”_ Dante says, with a clatter that suggests he has swung booted feet up onto the desk. _“We had a good ol’ hugging-it-out moment then I snuggle-attacked him. Best sleep I’ve had in years. We still sometimes sleep in the same room when your dad’s had a bad day– Oh hey, Verge.”_

_“DANTE!”_

The sound of his father’s angry tones echoing in the background nearly makes Nero drop the phone, and cold sweat forms on his forehead at the thought of what his father might have overheard–

_“Hey, Nero, want to chat with your dad? Vergil, put down the Yamato, you can kill me later. Your kid’s on the phone.”_

Nero hears a muffled scrabbling, Dante’s low chuckle, then the sound of fist meeting cloth and a small _oof_ of pain. The longing has grown in Nero’s chest now, burning like a ball of compressed fire under his sternum.

 _“Don’t be a hardass, Vergil!”_ Dante’s singsong voice echoes, edged with static, and then the background noise clears up until there is a rustle of cloth and Nero hears the familiar breaths of his father.

Nero opens his mouth. Closes it. Screws his eyes shut and leans his forehead against the wall, pressing the phone so hard to his ear he feels the ache in his skull.

“Nero?” his father says, with such an awkward, gentle eagerness and furled pride that Nero almost releases the breath he had been holding in a sob.

“Nero,” his father is saying again, with a note of growing concern, his voice so much closer to Nero’s ear than Dante’s ever was. “Are you well?”

_No._

“Yeah,” Nero says, nodding against the wall as, to his humiliation, the first of many silent tears well over his eyelids to run down his cheeks. “Yeah, I’m fine,” he says, with determination, and is proud of how his voice does not shake. “Just, you know. Insomnia.”

A pause, where Nero knows he has not quite succeeded in hiding everything from his father.

“Very well,” Vergil says, and Nero presses a hand against his twisting mouth against the despairing sob that threatens to burst out of it. “I will remind you that we have training scheduled for the day after tomorrow,” Vergil continues. “I…look forward to seeing you then.”

“Okay,” Nero says, and, because he cannot trust his voice to remain steady for much longer, and because his fingers are beginning to shake where he holds the phone to his ear, he mumbles “Goodnight,” and fumbles the phone back into its receiver on the wall without waiting for his father’s reply.

Nero takes four stumbling steps back into the kitchen and collapses into a seat at the counter, head in his hands.

His hitching breaths are turning to sobs.

He wants out– out of this mess of jealousy and anger and bitterness and longing, out of– everything.

Through his blurred vision, the liquor cabinet stares right back at him.

Nero gulps in one more breath, forces it down, and folds his hands together under his chin, dropping his gaze to the cabinet opposite him. He wants sleep without nightmares so badly it he feels the call of the liquor there like a physical pull.

He sits there, drained, tears slowly drying on his face and hands, staring at the liquor cabinet, unmoving through the lonely watches of the night, until the cold, pale sun rises again on another winter morning.

(:~:)

Nero moves through the demon hunt in a fevered reverie.

Nico is whooping, and the van is roaring somewhere to Nero’s right, and Red Queen flays demon skin from flesh and cleaves flesh from bone with the devastating control that Nero is so familiar with – and yet Nero feels none of it.

Not the shockwave exploding from the palm of his Gerbera, or the roar of Blue Rose when he uses it to blast a Pyrobat out of the air. Flaming bits of demon rain down on his face, and the burns are dull flares of distant pain that seal over immediately with demon energy.

The last demon vaporizes in a blaze of brilliant white light as Gerebera’s energy beam flares from his hand, and Nero numbly shakes off the twisted husk of metal that was the devil breaker as Nico shouts in victory somewhere behind him.

He turns on the spot and moves towards the van, meeting Nico’s exhilarated smile with an exhausted twitch of the lips.

“I think we should call it a day,” Nero says as he climbs in, going for the light banter he always had with Nico, and props his bloodstained boots up on the dashboard and closes his eyes before he can judge if he was successful.

A long, uncharacteristic silence from Nico, before the clatter of the gearshift and the low thrum of the engine rising into a thunder.

Nero runs his left thumb over his right elbow, and pretends to be asleep all the way back.

(:~:)

He gets Kyrie to eat dinner with him that night in the living room, away from the lure of the liquor cabinet, with the excuse of a movie to make up for it. He manages half his portion in slow, careful bites. Kyrie falls asleep on his shoulder halfway through _The Empire Strikes Back,_ and Nero feels his dinner turn to glue in his stomach when Luke loses his right arm to his father.

It is a movie he was watched a dozen times before this, and yet–

He had forgotten.

Nero mashes the remote with a thumb, shutting off Luke’s screaming.

He sits there for a long moment with Kyrie’s warm weight against his side, trying to ground himself.

Kyrie leans her head into his neck as he slides an arm around her shoulder and another under her knees, and he watches her peaceful, delicate face with an ache in his heart as he carries her upstairs and tucks her in. She curls into her pillow as he presses a kiss to her forehead, something breaking within him as she sleeps on undisturbed.

Nero gets ready for bed, brushing his teeth until his gums ache, then climbing in next to Kyrie and staring at the ceiling.

Exhaustion catches up with him, though, and he closes his eyes–

–and wrenches them open to the feeling of his heart hammering in his mouth, his father’s strangled cry still echoing in his ears.

Nero lays there, eyes wide open, staring at the shadows on the ceiling, until his breathing and his heartbeat slow from their frantic pace to just a little above normal. A glance at his bedside clock shows he has barely slept for half an hour.

He knows, logically, that he should just stay in bed.

But the longer he lays there, unmoving, the more jittery he becomes, the itch to move crawling under his skin, grasping invisible hands around his throat.

Nero chokes on a breath and slides out of bed. Spending another night staring at the liquor cabinet – feeling the pull of the whisky like a living thing around his heart – sounds like about the worst thing possible, so Nero grabs Red Queen and steps out barefoot into the garden, avoiding Kyrie’s neat tulip beds.

The air is bitingly cold on his short-sleeved shirt, and his long flannel pyjama trousers snag on the grass, but the cold wakes him up, an icy, outward burn that distracts him from the burn within, and Red Queen flourishes in his hand and the air turns to steel.

Again, and again, and again, until at last the sun peeks over the horizon and Nero is down on one knee in the soft grass of the garden, Red Queen plunged tip-first into the ground, gasping for breath and feeling as though he is about to pass out from exhaustion and hunger.

He stumbles back into the kitchen, hating how his head automatically turns to the liquor cabinet as he passes it, and goes upstairs.

Nero cleans himself up quietly, slips into bed as the early morning sun begins to filter through the curtains, and dies to the world.

In the haze of his exhausted, dreamless slumber, there is a moment where he registers Kyrie getting out of bed; a hand on his shoulder and a word that might be his name, but he is so, so tired and his muscles so sore and hopelessly pliant that he cannot hope to wake, and Kyrie’s hand disappears and Nero flees into the pitch darkness again, down, down until he cannot even recognize himself.

He sleeps until the worst of the exhaustion passes, and jerks awake at the culmination of another nightmare.

Nero groans as the sunlight hits his face. Each eyelid is weighed down with an impossibly heavy load. A glance at his beside clock shows he has had roughly two and a half hours of sleep.

Better than the night before, at least.

In his ratty flannel pyjamas and sweat-stained shirt, Nero staggers down the stairs. Kyrie is nowhere to be seen, long since left for the opera house.

The morning light makes it easier to ignore the liquor cabinet. Nero grabs the first box of cereal he sees and shakes it roughly into a bowl. The milk sloshes over onto the countertop when he pours it, but he cannot bring himself to care.

He rummages around for a spoon and carries the bowl out to the garden, where he sits on the bench facing Kyrie’s tulips, in the exact spot where he had fallen asleep against his father’s shoulder two months ago, when the desperation of survival was still fresh and they were both vulnerable enough to share the moment of quiet.

The first spoonful of cereal tastes like wet cardboard, and Nero chokes it down with a cough, already struggling to find the will to bring the next spoonful up to his lips. His stomach rebels as the first mouthful reaches it, and the spoon slips into the milk as Nero closes his eyes against the exhausted nausea.

The whoosh of reality splitting open forces his eyelids apart.

He looks up.

His father looks back at him, the shimmering blue portal sewing closed behind him as he slides the Yamato back into its sheath.

Nero’s mind blanks.

Vergil is staring at him, quick blue eyes running from his exhausted face down his rumpled pyjamas up to his face again.

“Uh,” Nero says, eventually. “What time is it?”

“Ten hours antemeridian,” Vergil replies. “As we agreed.”

“Oh,” Nero says. “Shit.”

He stands up, and some of the milk sloshes out of the bowl to rain on Kyrie’s tulips. Vergil follows the motion with increasingly darkening eyes.

“Right,” Nero mumbles. “Sorry. Come in, make yourself comfortable. I…uh. I’ll be a moment.”

He dumps the bowl in the sink, the whole thing, scattering cornflakes all over the bottom of the sink itself, and tries to stop his head from spinning as he clambers upstairs. It takes longer than it should to find suitable training clothes, and when he glances at himself in the bathroom mirror he winces at what he sees – too-pale skin, drawn cheeks, bags under his eyes.

He stumbles back down to the kitchen and finds his father standing there, the Yamato loose in his left hand, staring at the sink with its upturned cereal bowl.

Vergil snaps his gaze towards Nero as he enters, and Nero feels momentarily like he understands the fear some lesser demons show when Vergil stares at them with the same intensity he does now.

“There’s a spot not too far from here that’s good for training,” Nero rambles as they step out of the house. He curls over the keyhole as he locks the door, attempting to hide the shaking of his hand as he inserts the key in the keyway.

Vergil does not speak. Nero can feel his father’s burning gaze on him the entirety of the short walk as Nero leads the way out of the neighbourhood, to patch of open wilderness at the edge of the forest proper, a wide clearing of windswept snow.

“Okay, we’re here,” Nero pants as they reach the edge of the clearing, trying to hide his shiver as the cold seems to leach right through his coat and through his skin, seeping into his bones. He had never minded the cold much, his demon blood giving him more resistance to extreme temperatures, but now the ice seems to claw frozen hands through every gap in his clothing, turning his breaths into rattling wheezes.

Vergil has not moved. He looks at Nero with a gaze that is far too perceptive, something like alarm rising in his features.

Nero feels himself growing steadily more impatient. _“What,”_ he says, testily.

Vergil blinks once, and his expression smoothes over like stone. “Ah. I thought we might start with the basics. This is our first opportunity to train together since both of us have recovered fully. I would like to see your sword forms.”

Nero nods, unhooks Red Queen from his back, and settles into a stance. Taking a breath, he begins to move through the basic forms of the Order of the Sword, forms that he had trained with as a child.

He is about five steps in when he realises his mistake.

He had moved through these forms again and again last night, without care for breath or pain or rest, from when the moon reached its zenith to when it finally disappeared beneath the horizon. Three hours of proper sleep in as many days, the rest fraught with nightmares or shallow and fitful with alcohol on his tongue.

Nero’s feet have turned to lead, his spine aching like the winter branches of the trees above; his wrists burn with every movement, his stomach is a howling, empty hole within him, and every sudden spin and burst of movement makes dark spots dance in front of his eyes–

“Enough.”

His father’s hand seizes hold of his wrist, halting Red Queen mid-strike, and Nero takes a sharp breath until he realises it is his left wrist – his sword hand.

“Enough,” Vergil repeats, and there is the same faint, gentle earnestness that had pierced Nero to the core, two nights before when he had leant against the wall fighting the shuttered sobs in his throat as he spoke to his father.

“Nero,” Vergil murmurs, stepping closer, and Nero’s whole body aches with the urge to throw down Red Queen and stumble into his father’s arms and be _held._

And yet–

His father steps closer, silhouetted against the morning sun, and the part of Nero that still screams silently at every nightmare throws him back to his garage, the silhouette of Vergil’s hood against the setting sun–

Nero’s left wrist spasms under his father’s hand, twists away.

Vergil’s intake of breath is sharp. Pained.

Nero fights to control his own breathing, the self-hatred rising up inside of him as he turns away, turning his words hard, glittering, like the ice encasing the tree branches above.

“I’m fine. I don’t need your help.”

“Nero,” his father’s voice is saying, and Nero feels the ghost of a touch on his shoulder. “Nero, please.” There is a strangled note in Vergil’s voice.

“Just–” Nero closes his eyes. Opens them again. “Just let me continue. _Please.”_ An echo of his father’s plea.

A pause.

“No,” Vergil says with finality, and Nero curls in on himself, shame rising up from the pit of his empty stomach. “You are unwell,” Vergil says, matter-of-fact. “To continue would be meaningless in your current condition.”

Despair claws its way up Nero’s throat, sends words hissing from between his teeth.

He turns on his father, eyes flashing dry and red in the freezing wind.

“Look, jackass, I understand,” Nero hisses, and he feels as he did in those last hours in the dome, dredging up what little strength he had left to press on. “I know you think I’m weak. Look at you. The dome barely affected you at all.” He gasps in a breath, feels tears begin to clog in his throat, choking him. “I may have beaten you once on the Qliphoth, but I’m weaker than you in every way that matters and you know that. I know I’m never going to be good enough for you.”

His father starts forward, as if to speak, and Nero rambles on, the words spitting from his lips now like unstoppable blades.

“I don’t want this,” Nero barks a laugh that tears at his lungs. “I don’t need your pity.”

Vergil is staring at him now, frozen, one hand still reaching out.

Nero chances a glimpse at his father’s face and nearly folds in half right there an then at the sheer agony that flashes across Vergil’s face before it flattens in a granite mask.

“I see,” Vergil says, in a voice so tightly controlled that Nero almost flinches.

Nero glances up at his father’s again, and his heart leaps into his throat, hammering in fear.

Vergil’s face might be an impassive mask, but his eyes are terrifying – shards of emotionless blue ice that skewer Nero in place.

Nero knows with complete certainty that his father is furious, and that Nero has crossed over some irreparable line. His left hand drifts to his right elbow, digs into his coat until pain spikes up his fingers. He feels his breathing grow ragged, misting into the frozen air.

“I can see I am not wanted here,” Vergil says, face hardening further as his eyes follow the movement of Nero’s hands, lingering on Nero’s elbow. “I will leave you.”

Vergil turns on the spot, left hand white-knuckled on the Yamato’s sheath, and slices a portal into the winter air.

Unbidden, a plea rises to Nero’s lips as his father steps through the portal, back straight, dark blue coat fluttering in the wind.

The portal closes.

“Don’t go,” Nero whispers, and curls in on himself, fingers white on his aching elbow, as the tears come at last.

(:~:)

Dante whistles merrily as he ducks through the last flickering streetlight and unlocks the door to the _Devil May Cry_ shop, balancing the enormous pizza box in one hand as he edges into the shadowed shop.

“Pi- _zza_ , pi- _zza_ ,” he hums to himself, dumping the box on the desk, flicking on the desk light as he collapses into the squeaky chair, and reaching in for the first slice with a hand covered in dried demon guts. Good demon hunt, good cash up front, and delicious, greasy pizza. Heaven.

Dante is midway through his first slice when his eyes slide to his left and alights on the curled shape on the sofa beside the fridge.

The slice of pizza goes flying, and Ivory is halfway out of its holster before he recognises the distinctive silhouette of slicked-back hair.

“What the _hell,_ Vergil,” Dante grouses, pulling both feet off the desk to slam against the floor. “I nearly shot you.”

Vergil does not move. The pool of dirty light from the desk lamp seeps across the tiles, just reaches the tips of Vergil’s boots.

Dante watches his brother for a moment.

“Okay, okay,” Dante says, heaving himself out of the desk chair and towards the light switches by the door. A casual flick of his finger, and the lights blaze to full brightness. He turns in place. “Now will you tell me what’s– _Shit_.”

Vergil sits curled over his knees, coat discarded beside him on the couch, the Yamato set on the low table in front of him. His face is in his hands, his shirt folded up to his elbows, and a half-bottle of Dante’s cheap vodka sits beside the Yamato.

Dante approaches cautiously.

Vergil does not move as Dante carefully removes the bottle, taking a small swig himself to fortify against the mess this following conversation will definitely be.

Dante pushes the bunched up coat aside and settles on the couch beside his brother.

A moment, where Dante simply listens to Vergil breathing.

“Verge?” Dante ventures.

Vergil inhales. It almost sounds like a sob. “I am incapable of doing anything,” he says, voice thick with unshed tears, “that does not hurt my son.”

Oh, damn. Training must not have gone well.

“Something happen?” Dante says.

“I have failed him,” Vergil says, lifting his face from his hands, and Dante jerks back, because his brother’s eyes are rimmed red, filled with such depths of pain that Dante forgets to breathe. “I have always failed him,” Vergil laughs, a broken, raw sound of absolute despair. “He is in pain, and yet I could do nothing but pain him further.”

“Vergil,” Dante says, reaching out and clasping a hand around his brother’s wrist, feeling the fluttering pulse there. “You didn’t mean to hurt him.”

“But I _did,_ once,” Vergil says, the self-hatred burning in his voice, each word a blade ripping up out of him. “I tore his arm from its joint, left him bleeding in his own home.”

Dante looks away.

He hears a stifled sob, and realises with a jolt of horror that there are tears dripping down Vergil’s chin.

Vergil has buried his face in his sleeve, breath hitching. “I don’t deserve Nero. He’s afraid of me. He’s always been afraid of me, and nothing I can do will ever change that.”

“Vergil,” Dante says, sliding closer, “You’re not a horrible father.”

Vergil makes a horrible noise, halfway between a keen and a laugh. “Don’t joke with me, Dante,” he whispers through shuddering gasps. “You would make a far better father than I ever would.”

Dante’s hand tightens on Vergil’s wrist at that – he remembers weeks on end laying on this same couch, dead to the world, only rousing to eat, sleeping curled in the scent of his own unwashed body, the air grey and colourless.

“I should have died,” Vergil says suddenly, turning to face Dante with a terrifyingly blank expression. “I should have let the Yamato be, and _died_ , and Nero might have been happy–”

“Shut up,” Dante says, and pulls his brother in close. Vergil shakes under his hold, but Dante’s hand curls on the back of his brother’s neck as he tucks Vergil’s face into his shoulder, and Vergil melts into Dante’s embrace, as if he has finally given up the fight to maintain his control.

“We’re gonna find a way to help Nero,” Dante says, low and fierce. “We’re gonna find a way to help him, and then you and him are gonna talk this out, and we’re going to be a happy family again–”

Vergil wheezes a laugh into Dante’s shoulder – the mad sound of hysteria.

“Listen to me!” Dante wrenches his brother to face him, presses his forehead to his brother’s brow. “Listen to me,” Dante almost begs, the emotion cracking in his voice. “We’re going to get through this. We got through everything else before this. We’ll get through this too.”

Vergil’s only response is another crackling wheeze, a terrifying reminder of his days nerveless and struggling to breathe after the dome, and Dante pulls him in close again, steadying him, until the sound of his brother’s quiet sorrow runs its course.

(:~:)

Nero stares at the liquor cabinet.

Kyrie is asleep upstairs. Nero sits at the kitchen counter, his left hand white-knuckled on his right elbow.

Exhaustion is too simple a word to describe his state, now, and the grief of the morning has settled firm claws into his heart and claimed it for grief forever.

Nero stares at the liquor cabinet.

He stares, and stares, and continues to stare, fingers digging into the skin of his elbow, and counts the minutes and hours until morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sigh. Poor Nero. Poor Vergil.
> 
> Next up: Good things finally start happening.
> 
> I wrote this entire emotionally draining 11000 word chapter in 26 hours. lol.
> 
> Don't worry, we'll get to the healing soon. Feel free to comment or leave me a message if you have any questions about the fic. I'm on a 24 hour shift at the hospital tomorrow, but I'll be chugging away at the next chapter after I get off work Sunday morning.
> 
> I also have to thank WafflesRisa, my twin, who basically helped plan out this fic and hammer out the fine details. Couldn't have asked for a better editor and co-writer.
> 
> You can find me on tumblr at [eirianerisdar](www.eirianerisdar.tumblr.com).


	2. Little Wanderer, Hie Thee Home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Merry Christmas, everyone!
> 
> A Christmas gift of 50-proof concentrated hurt/comfort for all of you.
> 
> Music for this chapter: _Come Back to Us_ , Thomas Newman (1917 soundtrack)

_“Nero?”_

Nero jars awake to the blue-hued light of early morning.

The icy marble of the kitchen countertop presses like a frozen blade against his cheekbone. The cold has seeped into his bones, turned his limbs numb, nerveless.

Where is he?

He had been–

He had been staring at the liquor cabinet, grief sinking claws into his exhausted heart, and then the world had turned grey–

A warm hand on his shoulder, another on his cheek, the heat so startling on the ice-fed knife of his cheekbone that it is almost painful.

Nero raises bloodshot, empty eyes up to Kyrie’s face, and cannot find the energy to speak. His heart throbs ever-so-slowly in his aching chest.

She is looking down at him with something akin to terror on her face, eyes tracing his shivering form as he lays slumped across the kitchen counter like a dead thing – but the next moment Kyrie’s gaze narrows with determination, and her arms tighten around him and heave him out of the chair.

Nero bites back a yell of pain as his cold-stiff joints buckle under the sudden weight, and for a dangerous moment the two of them sway over the creaking floorboards of the kitchen, Kyrie’s slight form struggling to support Nero’s larger frame.

Then Nero gets his feet under him and they manage to stumble the five steps to the den, where Kyrie deposits him on the sofa. Nero sits there, shivering uncontrollably, as Kyrie snatches up a patterned throw and wraps it around them both, the long sleeves of her knitted cardigan brushing his chin as she tucks the blanket tighter around his shoulders before curling up into his arms, tucking her head against his neck.

Her warmth melts through Nero’s thin cotton shirt, seeps into his skin. Pain flares in his fingers, his feet, as blood returns to them – almost as though his heart begins to truly beat again. A violent shiver wracks him from his core, and his breath hitches in his chest as he buries his face in Kyrie’s hair.

“I’m here,” Kyrie says, breath soft against his ear, one blessedly warm hand at his cheek.

“Kyrie,” Nero says, and the name is almost a sob.

They hold each other in the dark blue light of the early hours before dawn, simply breathing, until Nero feels Kyrie shift in his arms.

“You haven’t been sleeping,” she says softly against his shoulder.

Nero looks away. “I didn’t want to worry you,” he whispers, the guilt bubbling up inside him. “I’m sorry. I should have told you.”

“Yes,” Kyrie says, grasping his fingers tight in hers when he flinches away. “But I should have asked if you were doing better, rather than assuming. I’m sorry, too.”

Her quiet, determined kindness washes over Nero, gives him strength enough to speak again.

He tells her about retching in the alley, his heart thunder in his ears and panic pressing in on all sides; the tells her the words he had screamed at his father in the ice-lined clearing, the sheer _pain_ on Vergil’s face replaced by the emotionless mask that Nero knows must have meant fury, and the twisting guilt and grief that threatens to eat Nero whole, even now.

“Oh, Nero,” Kyrie murmurs. “I’m so sorry.”

“And it’s not just– it’s not just that,” Nero says, breath coming shorter now, terror rising in his veins at what he is about to admit. He looks away, squeezes his eyes shut in anticipatory pain. “I’ve been thinking. About– about drinking. Thinking about it a lot more often than I should be.”

For a long, horrible moment, Nero waits for Kyrie to pull away from him, from his half-truths and hidden secrets.

She holds him tighter, instead, and the sheer relief almost brings tears to Nero’s eyes.

“Because it might help you sleep?” Kyrie says.

“Yeah,” Nero admits, and breathes a shaky laugh, the shock of the admission trembling through him. “I just– there are nightmares, and I can’t sleep, then I come down here to the kitchen, and I stare at the liquor cabinet, and it _stares back_ at me, and I just keep staring–”

“Oh, Nero,” Kyrie murmurs, pressing her lips against his cheek, and Nero leans into the touch, the tightness in his chest releasing just a little. “I love you. I’m so sorry you felt you had to go through this alone.”

Nero nods into her hair, not trusting himself to speak.

“How can I help?” Kyrie says. “I’m here for you.”

It is like the question takes Nero by the shoulders and shakes him; takes the lopsided mess that is the world and rights it again.

“The liquor cabinet,” he says, hoarsely.

“Of course,” Kyrie says. “Would you like me to empty it, or do you want us to do so together?”

A sudden thought occurs to Nero. “But those bottles are gifts from your friends–”

 _“Shh,”_ she hushes him. “Those bottles are just _things._ You’re you.”

Nero thinks of the taste of the whisky sliding down his throat, turning the numbness of his fingers into a warm lethargy–

He cannot conquer this alone.

But he is not alone; he has Kyrie.

“Together,” he whispers, and Kyrie nods, takes his hands, pulls him to his feet.

It takes a surprisingly short time to gather all the bottles into a single bag and carry it outside together. Nero winces once or twice when he catches a glimpse of expensive labels with handwritten notes on them from Kyrie’s friends; but Kyrie does not seem to care. She holds open the trash can lid as Nero throws in the bag itself, and the smashing of glass as it hits the bottom washes Nero with a heady relief. He wheezes a disbelieving laugh that mists into the cool air, raising a raw gaze up to the sky, where the first hint of pink sunrise glows on the horizon.

Kyrie pulls him back into the house, and seems to sense that Nero cannot bring himself to consider returning to bed and the nightmares there, so settles him on the sofa, wraps him in the throw again, and somehow cajoles him into drinking a full cup of hot tea.

Nero curls up on the sofa with her in his arms, stomach pleasantly warm and filled, and finally falls into a dreamless sleep as the brightening sunlight filters through the window and pools over them both.

(:~:)

Vergil regards the morning sun with aching, gritty eyes as the pale winter light lances through the windows to wash over his curled form where he lays on the sofa, one arm thrown over his face.

He has no recollection of falling asleep – only Dante’s arms around him and the terrible, tearing sorrow in his chest, drowning out all else until he was blind and deaf and could only gasp wheezing breaths between clenched teeth.

But there is a questionably clean cushion under his head, and someone has arranged a gaudily patterned throw over him, its multicoloured weave tickling his chin.

Dante.

Vergil watches the dust swirl in the morning light.

The first morning of the rest of his life; a life without his son.

He turns his face away from the rising sun, away from the weak winter sunlight that tries to warm him, and attempts to return to the nothingness of sleep – an empty darkness he can drown himself in.

The creaking of a door. Footsteps pad nearer, bare feet on wooden floorboards. The _clink_ of ceramic against the low table by his head, and the scent of fresh coffee.

The rustle of cloth as someone crouches next to him.

“C’mon, Verge. Rise and shine.” Dante’s voice holds its usual cheer, but has a hoarse edge to it that belies a difficult night, as well.

Vergil curls further into the cushion and its faint scent of old alcohol, and pulls the throw higher up to cover his head. It is dark and formless in here, with only his slow, unending heartbeat for company, and he can almost pretend he does not exist.

A sword-calloused hand finds his shoulder. Vergil cannot muster the energy to shrug off his brother’s touch, and so floats there, formless, until Dante’s hand leaves him with a rustle of cloth and his brother’s footsteps fade away into the next room.

Laying there, eyes closed, with only his misery as company, Vergil eventually goes back to sleep.

He dreams.

Not of Nero, or the three crimson lights glaring above him as he screams in Mundus’s dungeons, but of the scent of his mother’s roses in the garden, heady in the summer air as he curls languidly in the grass by the flowerbeds, poetry in his hands. His small fingers barely fit around the thickness of the book, but he manages best he can.

Dante’s yells break the peaceful birdsong, and Vergil lowers his book to glare at his brother’s gangly form as Dante chases an errant bee around the flowerbeds, bare feet stamping, shorts and shirt helplessly muddied, swinging the wooden sword in his hand in cheap mimicry of their father’s graceful forms.

“You’re never going to hit that thing,” Vergil says with a tone of superiority.

Dante skids to a stop next to him, dripping mud onto the grass. “Oh yeah?” he retorts. “I’d like to see _you_ try.”

Vergil rolls his eyes. “I’m not going to stomp around in the mud like you, _pig_.”

“ _I’m_ a pig?” Dante’s face reddens. “Well, then _you’re_ a spoilt brat!”

The poetry book falls to the grass. “Don’t quote father at me!”

“You can’t tell me what to do!”

And suddenly they are brawling in the flower beds, mud coating both their white-haired heads, small fists pummeling each others’ faces, yanking each others’ hair, rose petals flying, their childish rage sending birds fleeing into to the air from the trees around the garden–

Dante shout turns to a surprised shriek of pain.

Vergil scrambles back onto his rear, eyes widening in shock as he and Dante both stare at the long, twisted rose stem embedded in Dante’s leg, wickedly long thorns piercing skin and already drawing thin lines of blood that trickle down to stain the emerald grass.

Chest heaving, Vergil opens his mouth the same time Dante does.

 _“Mama!”_ they scream as one, Vergil in fear, Dante in pain.

“Vergil! Dante!”

Vergil stares, frozen in place, as the sweep of their mother’s golden hair enters his vision and she gathers Dante into her arms, the sleeves of her dark crimson housecoat brushing the grass. She rushes Dante back into the house without even a glance in Vergil’s direction, and somehow this turns the fear in Vergil’s chest into sheer terror.

He waits, utterly alone, hugging his knees in the garden, as dusk comes and draws long shadows across the ruined flowerbeds.

It must be almost suppertime by the time the creak of the door sounds over the garden again, and Vergil finds those same crimson sleeves that had ignored him as they swept his brother away now gently wrapping around his shivering form, holding him close.

Vergil throws his short arms around his mother’s neck and buries his face in her shoulder, tears of relief staining the silk of her housecoat.

“Shh, my darling,” she murmurs into his hair. “I’m here.”

“Don’t leave me,” Vergil sobs. “Promise you won’t ever leave me.”

“Never,” his mother whispers as she carries him in to the light and the warmth, where Dante is waiting, leg already healed, faint worry on his face as he looks at his brother.

“I will never leave you,” their mother says, pressing a kiss to Vergil’s forehead and slipping a hand out from under his weight to brush through Dante’s hair. “Both of you, for as long as I live.”

Relaxing into the safety of his mother’s embrace, Vergil smiles through his drying tears–

He wakes.

Vergil stares up at the flaking ceiling of the _Devil May Cry_ shop, feeling the bright noon sunlight that floods over him from the window like his mother’s warm embrace, and he _aches_ so much for her in that moment that he can barely breathe.

“Hey.”

Vergil looks to his left, finds Dante crouched next to him, that same look of faint worry on his features that he had at six years old when he watched their mother carry Vergil in half-frozen from the garden.

“I dreamed of Mother,” Vergil says hoarsely, and sees longing and old pain flicker in Dante’s eyes.

“She fought for us,” Dante says. “Until the bitter end. For you, especially.”

“I know,” Vergil says, staring up at the ceiling. Dante had told him of their mother’s final choice that day in the burning house, and the knowledge still haunts him – that she met her end trying in vain to save him.

“It wasn’t your fault, Vergil,” Dante says, and Vergil clenches his jaw and looks away into the cracked leather of the sofa beside his head, because Dante has read him perfectly, as brothers always do, and Vergil still holds the grief and guilt of their mother’s death too near.

At first, as an eight-year-old, shivering, lost, and helpless, with only the Yamato and hordes of demons on his scent, Vergil had thought he would die from how much he missed her, even as he resented her for choosing to save Dante over him. Then he had thought he would miss her less, the longer he wandered alone.

But he had been wrong; even before Vergil learned their mother’s final choice from Dante’s tale, Vergil had missed her no less for his anger; and now more than three decades after her death, her absence is still a hollow in his heart he can never quite fill.

“I miss her too,” Dante says beside him, uncharacteristically quietly. “Every day.”

Vergil nods, then, because to admit out loud that he misses her as well would be a weakness, and that would take the fragile, fractured state he is in now and shatter him truly.

Nero’s absence now joins that of his mother’s, opening the old wound afresh, sending fresh blood oozing from his very soul.

Vergil closes his eyes, curling around his bleeding core, wanting to fall into the blessed oblivion of sleep again – but Dante nudges a warm mug against his fingers where they rest by his head, and Vergil smells the sharp scent of coffee.

“C’mon, Verge,” Dante pleads, the sofa dipping by Vergil’s hip as Dante sits beside him. “You gotta at least drink something. Trust me, I know. All you want to do is sleep, and forget. But it gets worse if you don’t eat or drink.”

With tremendous effort, Vergil opens his eyes the merest sliver, glimpses the fear on his brother’s face that had not made it into Dante’s voice.

The world is still grey, and his limbs lead, but for his brother…perhaps, for his brother, Vergil can find the will to move.

He sits up with difficulty, eyes bloodshot and utterly dry, clothing rumpled and stiff, but it is worth it when Dante’s face melts into a picture of relief. Dante hands Vergil the mug of coffee and climbs onto the sofa itself, settling close behind him so that Vergil has warmth in his hands and at his back.

Vergil makes sure to subtly dig an elbow into Dante’s gut all the same, just so that his brother will not have the pleasure of knowing just how much Vergil appreciates Dante’s presence.

“Oof,” Dante says in response, and leans his forehead onto Vergil’s shoulder from behind with a little huff.

Vergil takes a sip of coffee, and almost gags.

“What the hell did you put in this,” he hisses.

“I used your fancy coffee maker,” Dante says, voice muffled where his face is squished into the back of Vergil’s shoulder. “There were many buttons. I didn’t bother to read all of them.”

“Plebian,” Vergil says, taking another sip.

Vergil feels Dante smile into his shoulder, and that somehow lets colour seep into the world again, turns the white-grey winter light to warm gold.

They sit like that for a long while in the noon sunlight, Vergil tasting the coffee in small, careful sips, Dante leaning sloppily into Vergil’s back – two brothers, just existing.

Then Dante breathes out against Vergil’s shoulder, and says – with the easy clarity that Vergil so envies him for at times – “I think we should go home.”

Vergil’s hands tighten around the mug.“Did you...?” he whispers hoarsely. “A grave?”

A moment, where Dante leans more heavily against Vergil, as though seeking comfort.

“No,” Dante says, quietly. “I couldn’t do it alone. After Mallet Island, it just reminded me that I’d killed you, and I would always be alone.”

Vergil closes his eyes against the memory, dim and blurred as it was sealed in Nelo Angelo’s armour, nothing but a remnant of himself.

“But we’re here now,” Dante says, and some of his usual easy tone seeps into his voice once more. “I think Mom would like it if we visited her together.”

And then, because most of Vergil still remains numb with grief from the events of the previous day, and because he wishes, just for a moment, to be back in the garden among the roses at Dante’s side, he nods.

(:~:)

Kyrie had offered to go with Nero to that afternoon’s therapy session, and Nero had thanked her, but declined - he feels slightly stronger now after a morning’s good sleep, and less inclined to shatter at the slightest touch.

He knows he still looks like he went four rounds against a Goliath and lost, and though the therapist does not comment when he enters her office, Nero knows the subject will come up sooner than later.

He still spends a moment sitting there with his hands warming around his cup of tea, trying to delay the inevitable.

The therapist looks at him – at the circles under his eyes and his too-pale skin - and says plainly, “How have you been?”

Nero looks at the silvery steam rising from the surface of his tea, and tries to find a word that encompasses the enormity of what he experienced in the last few days.

“Pretty shit,” he says, and finds his lips twitching wryly in return to the therapist’s slight smile.

“Could you speculate as to a cause? Was it just a general feeling? Or was it triggered by a specific incident?”

“...Both?” Nero says, after a moment’s introspection.

The therapist nods. “Which do you want to talk about first?”

In a way, Nero is grateful for the cup of tea; it hides the tremor of his hands at the thought of laying out his weaknesses for inspection and reliving his worst memory yet of his father.

When the silence hangs a little too long, the therapist tilts her head and speaks. “It isn’t weakness to admit our troubles, Nero. It’s quite the opposite. It takes strength to speak of one’s worst vulnerabilities.”

“I don’t think I’m strong enough to do that,” Nero says, looking away.

“And you’ve just proved that statement wrong,” the therapist says. “That was a vulnerability you just admitted - and that takes strength, too. You are stronger than you know.”

Nero feels bitterness rise up in his throat. “I don’t think someone strong would have nightmares as bad as mine. I don’t think they’d stay up every night staring at their liquor cabinet, either. They would manage to eat instead of half starving all the time because they can’t stomach the food, and they wouldn’t keep accidentally gouging lines into their elbow, and they-” he cuts himself off, breathing hard, blinking away the traitorous tears gathering at the corners of his eyes. “They wouldn’t hide all these things from those they care about the most.”

Nero expects the therapist to jump in right away, pull apart his words as though dissecting him inside out – but she does not. She waits instead, a patient expression on her face, until his breathing returns to normal, and he is both absurdly grateful and utterly embarrassed about it.

“I didn’t… I didn’t even tell Kyrie until this morning,” he says eventually, the admission sending guilt burning white-hot within him. “She was so…so _accepting_ of it.”

The therapist smiles. “She sounds like a wonderful person. You should be proud of yourself for telling her. Knowing when to seek help is one of the most important steps towards getting better.”

“But I still did all those things,” Nero says, and the self-hatred is curling in his stomach again. “I’m still so…weak.”

“There’s a lot to examine here,” the therapist says. “But I think we should start with the first, most important question. Why do you think surviving those things doesn’t reflect your strength?”

Nero blinks. The answer is so ingrained in him he cannot understand the reason for the question. “Because _I_ reacted like that. _I_ couldn’t deal with it. _I_ ended up like that.”

“Ah,” the therapist says. “As compared to…?”

Nero stares.

“My father,” he says, as though it is the most obvious thing in the world. “As compared to my father. He was close to death when he first returned from Hell. Then he nearly died beside me in the dome. We _survived_ together, and yet he… he’s barely affected by it, while I ended up watching him die every night when I close my eyes.”

“Okay,” the therapist says, leaning forward slightly with a thoughtful expression on her face. “How do you know he isn’t affected by it?”

“What?” Nero laughs, then; a breathy, bitter laugh. “Because he isn’t. He’s untouchable. I don’t know the details, but my father went through some pretty horrifying things in Hell. But even after the dome, Dante told me my father only had a couple bad nights’ sleep. I don’t see how any of it affected him permanently.”

“Hmm,” the therapist murmurs. “Did Kyrie see the extent of your struggles before you told her?”

Nero shakes his head. “Of course not. I didn’t want her to worry, so I made a point–” he cuts himself off, because something has just occurred to him and the shock is bleeding through his core. _“So I made a point of hiding them,”_ he whispers. The cup of tea nearly slips from his suddenly loose fingers, and he catches it with a curse.

The therapist is looking steadily at him now, wordlessly, letting him work it out for himself, and Nero wants to grab hold of his own brain and _shake_ it, because he cannot fault the logic of his thoughts and yet–

“Wait,” he says, staring disbelievingly at her. “You’re saying my father’s hiding his vulnerabilities from me? That he _can_ be vulnerable?”

The therapist shrugs. “I only know as much about him as you’ve told me,” she says. “I can’t speak on your father’s behalf. But I know from experience that everyone has their own anxieties, their own struggles. I highly doubt your father would be any different.”

“But I don’t– Nero’s brain is short-circuiting. “I don’t understand what he wants. Sometimes it’s like he actually wants to know me better; I called him two days ago, and he seemed almost eager to hear my voice. Then yesterday he came for training and he just–” he falls silent, jaw working. “We were supposed to be training together, and by then I was…basically a wreck, and he told me we had to stop because I was unwell and continuing would be meaningless and I just– I just wanted to be able to _do_ something instead of staring at the liquor cabinet, and hating myself–”

“So what happened?” the therapist says calmly.

Nero’s hands close into fists at his knees, trembling despite his best efforts to hold them steady. “I told him I didn’t need his help, or his pity,” he says, the bitter echo of it welling up over his lips. “That I knew I was always going to be weaker than him, and that _he_ knew it, and that he was stronger than me in every way that mattered, and that I would never be good enough for him.”

The therapist looks at him. Nods once. “Okay. And what did he do then?”

“He just–” Nero stops. Runs a shaking hand over his face as he stands and begins to pace. “I think he tried to reach out, but he stopped halfway and his face did the _thing_ –”

“The thing?” the therapist says, as he wears a line into the carpet before her.

“The _thing,_ ” Nero hisses, snapping around mid-pace, frustration boiling up inside of him. “The thing where his face goes all blank, like he’s trying to shut everyone out, and _prove_ that he’s the most unaffected person to ever exist, as if I didn’t know it already. And then he said it was obvious he wasn’t wanted there and just _left.”_

A pause, where Nero stands there, chest heaving, fists curled so tight at his sides they ache. “He just… _left me_ ,” he chokes, and the admission takes the claws of grief that have clung to his heart since yesterday and clenches them deeper, drawing fresh blood.

Silence in the small space for a long, long moment, with the late afternoon light lancing across the space and turning the dust motes to gold.

“And you didn’t want him to leave?” the therapist says, quietly.

Nero shakes his head, swallows the sob that threatens to rip from his throat.

“Why?”

 _“BECAUSE I WANTED HIM TO LOVE ME!”_ Nero screams, and the admission tears up out of him, leaving his insides scratched and raw and bleeding.

A moment, where the chamber is silent, save for Nero’s hitching breaths. He stands there, tears running down his face, fists curled at his side, and hates himself for admitting this last weakness, even if his father does not care.

“I wanted him to– to love me,” Nero gasps between shuddering sobs, chin curled to his chest. “Even if– even if I was weak. Even if I would never– never be as strong as he was. I thought that was what fathers were supposed to do.”

The therapist looks at him steadily for a long moment, as though she is weighing something in her mind.

“Okay,” she says. “It looks to me like you can’t reconcile the father who was eager to know you better and who nearly died for you in the dome with what happened yesterday.”

Nero nods, scrubbing his eyes with the heel of his hand.

“Nero, why do you think your father stopped the training?”

“Because I wasn’t performing up to his standards,” Nero chokes a wet laugh, collapsing back into the chair.

“Hmm, that’s not how I heard you describe it,” the therapist says. “Run though his words again. What did he say to you?”

“He said I was unwell,” Nero says, scrubbing his raw face with a sleeve. “That it would be meaningless to continue in my condition then.”

“So he stated a fact, that you were unwell,” the therapist repeats. “Which you knew yourself to be true. And that it would be meaningless to continue in your condition, which was also true.”

“Yes, but I was wasting his time,” Nero retorts. “I was useless.”

“Did he say that?” the therapist says, tilting her head at him. “Did he ever say any of those things you were saying about yourself? That you were weaker than him, or that you would never be good enough for him?”

“I–” Nero stops, stunned, because his father _hadn’t_ said that. Hadn’t said any of it, not on the Qliphoth, not in the dome, and yesterday, when Nero had flung it in his face, Vergil had frozen there with a half-second of something like agony on his features before turning emotionless once more.

“And when he left,” the therapist presses on, “What did he say?”

“That he could see that he was unwanted,” Nero whispers, with a slow horror growing under his skin.

“Yes,” the therapist says simply.

Nero looks down at his hands, tear-streaked and aching at the knuckles where he had clenched them so tightly around his anger, seething against a father who had treated him like nothing.

Or so he thought.

“Shit,” he whispers. “I pushed him away.”

The slow horror turns into a tide, hammering like nausea against his lips. He curls over himself, puts his head in his hands. The carpet pattern swims against his vision.

 _“Nero,”_ the therapist is saying, from somewhere far away, beyond the howling guilt that threatens to overwhelm Nero like an obsidian wave and drown him in its depths.

“Help me fix this,” Nero gasps, almost begging. “Please help me fix this.”

“I wish I could, but I can’t do this for you, Nero,” the therapist says. “You need to talk to him.”

“I can’t,” Nero says, his fingers curling desperately into his hair. “I don’t know how I could ever make it up to him. I wouldn’t know what to say.”

“I think you do,” the therapist says. “You’ve spoken to me for so long, and all I’ve heard you say can be summarised in one sentence: _You want your father to love you._ ”

“But what if he doesn’t want to talk to me?” Nero says, breath coming in short pants. “What if I’ve pushed him away forever?”

“You won’t know until you try,” the therapist says with a small smile. “And he left because he thought he wasn’t wanted. I think you should tell him he is.”

Nero nods, a heady mixture of hope and guilt and terror churning in his stomach. The feeling stays with him as the therapist brings the session to a close, and rises to settle somewhere behind his sternum as he stumbles out into the early rays of sunset.

He needs to–

He needs to tell Kyrie.

Nero crosses the street, shutters himself in the same phone box where, a week ago, he had called Nico during the remnants of a panic attack.

Kyrie picks up on the second ring.

_“Nero?”_

The softness of her voice pierces him – that, and the fact that Nero now recognises that the soft concern in her tone sounds so much like his father’s in the forest the day before, when Nero was too angry to hear it.

He tells her, with a throat completely dry from tears and long speech, everything that he had come to realise in the therapy session.

 _“You should call your father,”_ Kyrie says.

“I know,” Nero whispers, leaning a hand against the phone box wall and pressing his face into his elbow. “There’s just…so much _distance_ over the phone. I can’t tell what he’s thinking when he’s looking me in the face, let alone when he’s talking to me on the phone.”

Kyrie hums. _“Then go see him.”_

Nero stills, stunned. “Wait, what?”

 _“Go see your father,”_ Kyrie says. _“There’s an evening flight you could catch if you’re quick about it.”_

“But the money–”

 _“The money doesn’t matter,”_ Kyrie says softly, earnestly. _“You and your father do. Go. I’ll be fine.”_

Nero smiles, then, cradling the phone by his ear. It is at times like these he is reminded why he loves her so, so much.

“Love you,” he says. “Gotta go. I’ll call you.”

_“I love you too. I believe in you.”_

The phone clatters back onto the receiver, and Nero dashes out of the phone booth and into the red-gold sunset, hope threading through his steps for the first time in a long, long while.

(:~:)

“Gotta say, this dump doesn’t look any better than the last time I saw it.”

Vergil lets Dante’s words wash over him as they stand before the wrought-iron gates to their childhood home, the metal rusted and flaking, both gates forever fixed open as they were when Mundus’s forces invaded their home.

The last time Vergil had laid eyes on the mansion was on the night he chose to split himself into his human and demon halves. Then, the full moon had hung brilliant and glaring over the lonely eaves, illuminating his last, bitter steps home with silver light. He had staggered into the courtyard, the Yamato grasped tight in his shaking hand, and barely looked at the shadow of his childhood home; only thinking of survival, and revenge, and power, the loneliness eating away at him like the flaking of his flesh from his bones.

But today, the winter sun shines bright and surprisingly warm over the courtyard, stained cobblestones glistening in the sunlight, overgrown grass swaying gently in the wind. The sunlight filters down the gaping wound in the front of the house, where Urizen had forced his way out of the entrance hall and blasted chunks of stone across the courtyard.

Urizen’s memories are a hazy jumble of rage and cold fire in Vergil’s mind, but V’s stand out far clearer; he remembers curling, naked and cold and alone, cowering in a corner as his demon half smashed the front of their childhood home to smithereens, uncaring for the precious memories stored there.

Vergil closes his eyes against the recollection.

When he opens them again, Dante has edged closer and is looking at him with concern, and Vergil shakes his head once. “I am well,” he says, and tightens his hold on the small bouquet of dark crimson roses. In contrast, Dante has a colourful, mismatched bunch of wildflowers clasped in his hand, picked from the very same pathways in the forest between the mansion and Redgrave City that they had wandered as children.

They step through the gates together, pick their way across the rubble until they reach the house itself. They stand for a moment on what remains of the threshold, watching the sunlight on the shattered stone, the vines winding their way over what remains of the front façade of the house itself, and the mildew that has seeped into the red-painted walls and once-elegant stone arches.

“Mom died right here,” Dante says suddenly, and Vergil feels his heart seize within him.

“She hid me in there,” Dante says, voice quite even, as he crosses to a half-collapsed cabinet a half-dozen paces into the house, white-slatted wood dripping with mildew, cracked from years of neglect. “She hid me here, and told me to be brave, and wait, because she needed to find you.”

“Dante,” Vergil says, voice strangled within his throat.

“Then she ran here,” Dante says, long, loping stride taking him out to the courtyard stone again. He drops to one knee at the very edge of the courtyard, right where the wooden floor of the entryway starts proper, pressing his free hand to the stone. “I remember the edge of her housecoat – the one made of red silk. I remember thinking it looked like blood trailing behind her as she ran, and then I couldn’t see her anymore. She must have made it a step, two steps out into the courtyard before the flames and the falling stone caught her.” Dante takes a breath then, one that hitches audibly. “I heard her scream, and the sound of crashing stone, then – nothing.”

The guilt is a familiar, heavy weight in Vergil’s stomach by now, and he feels it grow steadily heavier as he watches Dante bow his head, long white hair hiding his face.

Vergil’s right hand tingles, moves without him willing it to towards Dante’s shoulder. He knows this is what Dante would do for him, and yet Vergil still hesitates before placing his hand feather-light on his brother’s shoulder.

There is a terrible heartbeat where Vergil is sure Dante will fling away the hand on his shoulder and scream at Vergil for his part in their mother’s death, but the next moment Dante’s shoulders relax, and he reaches up with his opposite hand to rest his palm on top of Vergil’s.

Vergil squeezes Dante’s shoulder hesitantly, and feels a wave of relief when Dante tightens his hold on Vergil’s hand in return.

Dante sniffs once, then pats the back of Vergil’s hand, picks up his bunch of wildflowers, and stands.

They move into the entranceway together, carefully skirting to either side of the dried blood that stains the bloated floorboards at the centre of the chamber. Vergil knows half the blood is Dante’s, and the other half his own, and he glimpses his brother look away from the blood the same time he does, neither of them wishing to speak of it.

They reunite before the charred fireplace, with the portrait hung askew above it, the mildew and the smoke stains having eaten away at all three white-haired heads on it, leaving only their mother’s face untouched.

It is fitting, Vergil muses, that this echo of their mother is the only thing preserved here, in this empty husk of their childhood home.

“I’m glad this painting survived,” Dante says, and Vergil knows his brother feels the same as he does.

They take the wooden steps up to the second floor together, the smell of mildew and ashes heavy in the air.

It is immediately apparent that the fire had blazed more harshly here. Charred wood groans precariously under their feet as they pass into the second floor gallery. Dante makes a small noise of disappointment when Vergil pronounces the route to the family bedrooms barred with burnt wood and shattered stone. The paintings here are unrecognisable, the canvas blackened and peeling off half-melted frames.

Then Vergil takes another step, and draws a surprised breath despite himself.

The thick oaken door to their father’s study is charred and eaten through with mold, hanging off its edges, but the carpet beyond is still recognisable in its understated dark green pattern, with comparatively less damage than the gallery floor.

Vergil’s feet quicken as he approaches the study, and he hears Dante’s steps hasten behind him as well.

They step into their father’s study together, and it is like they have slipped back in time.

The carpet is dull and moldy where it had once shone dark green, and the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves are bloated with mildew and smoke, the leather-bound volumes on the shelves long rendered unrecognisable by smoke and decades of cold and damp.

And yet, the wing-backed chair and the oak desk before it is untouched, their father’s favourite fountain pen still resting in its silver holder, and beside it, a stack of faded yellow parchment.

Placing his bouquet on the table, Vergil wraps his hand around the handle of the centre drawer and pulls once. At first he finds the wood too bloated to move; but a flicker of blue-lit demon power, and the drawer scrapes open.

Vergil feels Dante lean over his shoulder as he bends to examine the contents.

The purple velvet of the drawer lining is moth-bitten and damp with age, but there, amongst papers that flake to nothing when Vergil runs his hand across them, is a single silver locket, its once-bright surface long tarnished with neglect.

Vergil plucks the locket from its nest of forgotten parchment, and examines it carefully. The silver under his fingers is rough with a dull patina, shaped in a simple oval about the length of his thumb.

“Open it,” Dante whispers at Vergil’s shoulder, and Vergil complies.

The hinges move surprisingly smoothly, and as the locket opens, three locks of hair – one gold, two white – fall out to float onto the papers below.

Behind him, Vergil hears Dante’s breath hitch.

Their mother smiles up at them through the black-and-white photograph, radiant joy on her features where she leans against the pillow behind her head. There is a pale-haired baby in each of her arms, swaddled in cloth, sleeping soundly.

On the other side of the open locket, opposite to the photograph, is a single engraved line: _Sweet joy, but two days old._

Vergil feels tears choke in his throat.

“Blake,” he whispers, the same time Dante whispers, _“Dad.”_

Vergil reaches for the locks of hair that had fallen from the locket, runs a finger over the smooth golden silk of the longest. Dante does the same, and they fall silent for a moment, each lost in memory.

The two bundles of shorter white hair are downy soft – the velvet, impossibly smooth hair of newborn children, and Vergil opens his hand, allows Dante to place the three locks of hair almost reverently on his palm.

The locks of hair go back in the locket, and the two brothers stand there for a moment, the locket in Vergil’s hands, too overcome to speak.

“You should take this,” Vergil eventually says, hoarse voice incredibly loud in the furled silence. “It is too precious to be entrusted to me.”

Dante looks at him with an exasperated smile, and barks a laugh as he reaches out and folds Vergil’s fingers over the locket, clasping Vergil’s hands tightly with his own.

“Don’t be an idiot, Verge,” Dante says. “You hold on to it for both of us.”

Vergil nods once, not trusting himself to speak, and passes the chain over his head, tucking the locket beneath his shirt to rest by his half of his mother’s amulet.

They search through the rest of the study in a contemplative silence. Vergil tries to decipher some of the papers, but the ink is so long faded now that he can only read scattered words.

“Hey, look here,” Dante says, and Vergil turns to see Dante straightening, two dusty bottles in his hands. “Dad always told us to stay out of this cabinet. Turns out it was his secret booze compartment.”

“If I lived with two hellions like we were when we were children, _I’d_ have a secret alcohol compartment,” Vergil says wryly. He takes one of the bottles and examines it. Sparda’s crest stares back at him, stamped in raised glass on the bottle itself.

Dante snorts, and the air grows lighter between them, heady with memory and childish mischief. “Think this is drinkable?”

“I should think yes,” Vergil says, examining the wax seal on the cork of the bottle in his hand.

“C’mon,” Dante says, and they gather up the two bottles and their flowers and step out of the study together.

They move back downstairs and through the rear hallway, ducking under sagging beams, catching a glimpse of the partially collapsed dining room as they pass.

And then there is only the garden door before them, with its stained glass inserts twisted and shattered, and beyond that–

Vergil inhales sharply and comes to a halt, Dante almost stumbling into him as he, too, stares in shock.

Vergil doesn’t know what he expected – a burnt clearing of thorns, perhaps, or overgrown weeds, or cold mulch – but what lies before them is none of these.

Their mother’s garden has flourished.

Winter flowers tumble over each other at their feet, brilliant blossoms pushing out of a thin layer of pure white snow. Cup-shaped violet crocuses, with throats of yellow nectar; pale, delicate pink camellias, unfurling dozens of petals to shower upon the snow; miniature blue scillas, in clusters of star-shaped blooms; five-petaled English primroses and pure white snowdrops scattered like patches of fresh snow; Deep purple violas, with throats such a dark velvet they seem almost black, on and on in a patchwork quilt of flowers.

Here and there are hints of others that might only bloom in spring or summer; rose thorns, sunflower stems, old tulip buds.

This patchwork of colour extends from the very doorstep of the house out over the collapsed outer wall and towards the fields beyond.

“Vergil,” Dante says hoarsely as he bends to cup a camellia in his hand, the brilliant pink of the blossom bright against the verdant green of the stem.

“I know,” Vergil says, fighting to keep his voice even.

They find a suitable stone from the outer wall together, and set it in the centre of the garden, careful not to crush any blooms underfoot.

Dante scoops up a handful of snow and scrubs the stone free of moss and dirt, and Vergil draws the Yamato from his hip, etching careful letters into the stone.

Their mother’s name, and below: _Dearest mother._

Vergil and Dante stand before the stone, shoulder-to-shoulder, surrounded by the wild, beautiful garden that has grown out of their mother’s touch, a living echo of her memory.

“Hey, Mom,” Dante speaks first, voice thick. “We’ve come to visit. Sorry it took so long.” He places his small handful of wildflowers, so similar to those of the garden, at the base of the stone.

A long silence, where Dante looks at Vergil, but does not pressure him.

Vergil is clutching the bouquet of roses so hard his knuckles ache. There are words he has wanted to say for three and a half decades now, clawing their way up his throat and threatening to choke him. He chokes in a shuddering breath, fights over his failing control.

“It’s okay,” Dante is saying, voice thick with tears now. “It’s okay to let go, Vergil.”

“I– I hated you for a long time,” Vergil says, staring at his mother’s name as the first tear spills over, drawing a warm trail down his cheek in the cold winter wind. “I hated you because I thought you chose Dante over me. I thought you left me behind.”

Tears drip down his chin, scattering like raindrops on the roses in his hands.

“You died trying to find me,” Vergil whispers, and the first proper sob shudders up out of him, clenching in his chest. He closes his eyes against the pain of the old wound opened afresh. “I’m sorry, Mother. I’ll never be sorry enough.”

“S’not your fault, dumbass,” Dante says thickly.

Vergil crouches, places the roses beside Dante’s bunch of wildflowers. The two bouquets look a little incongruous next to each other – the expensive paper and deep red roses next to the mismatched bundle of multicoloured blooms – but Vergil knows their mother would have appreciated both equally.

He brushes soft fingers over his mother’s name. “Thank you for saving Dante,” he says, and hears Dante inhale in surprise behind him. “Thank you for saving him, so that he is here with me now.”

 _“Vergil,”_ Dante mumbles, sniffling, and Vergil lets Dante pull him up and gather him into an embrace.

Vergil holds his brother just as tightly as Dante holds him, their faces buried in each other’s shoulders.

“I’m so happy you’re not dead,” Dante mumbles into Vergil’s shoulder, and Vergil chokes a laugh despite himself.

“I’d say the sentiment was mutual, but that would be a lie,” Vergil says, and knows from Dante’s wet chuckle that his brother has seen through him completely.

They break apart to face their mother’s gravestone together again, both with drying tears on their faces, but utter peace between them.

Dante crouches, picks up one of the bottles of wine, and uncorks it with his teeth.

“Let’s have a toast,” he says around the cork, and spits it out to the side amongst the flowers.

Vergil nods assent.

“To Mom,” Dante says, raising the bottle with its Sparda house crest towards the sky, which is slowly turning pink-orange with the oncoming sunset.

“To Mother,” Vergil echoes.

Dante takes a long swallow, and, blinking rapidly, hands the bottle to Vergil. “Damn, that’s _strong,”_ Dante splutters.

Vergil takes a measured sip, and raises his eyebrows.

“Hmm,” he murmurs, already feeling the effects of the brew as a pure, starlit fire rushing into his veins. “Curious.”

“That sure isn’t like any human alcohol I’ve ever tasted,” Dante says, taking back the bottle. “And trust me, I’ve tasted a _lot_.”

“Our father was a full demon,” Vergil says. “I rather think he would need something stronger to classify as alcohol to his tastes.”

Dante shrugs once. And then he looks at the bottle by his feet, and the one in his hand, and says, “Do you think we should toast to Dad?”

Vergil pauses.

Sparda had by no means been a bad father, but he had also disappeared when they were eight years old, leaving them at the mercy of Mundus’s forces. Vergil had always presumed Sparda dead, and that he had not deserted his family of his own will, and yet…

It curdles his stomach to think of Sparda possibly abandoning them like Vergil abandoned Nero, all these years.

“Hey,” Dante says. “Our dad probably died trying to protect us. He wasn’t a bad father. You’re not, either.”

“I’m not sure I agree with the latter statement,” Vergil says tiredly. The liquor is already floating in his head, turning his exhausted mind pleasantly numb.

Dante sighs, and raises the bottle to the sunset again.

“Here’s to you, Dad,” he says, taking another swig. “Wherever your deadbeat ass is, anyway.”

Despite himself, Vergil stifles a chuckle at that, and takes a long pull from the bottle when Dante hands it to him, feeling the burn of the liquor down his throat like a comforting heat from within.

“C’mon,” Dante says, stooping to scoop up the other bottle of demon liquor and slapping a hand on Vergil’s shoulder. “Let’s get back.”

The Yamato opens a portal in the twilit air, leaving the garden still and quiet, the solitary stone at its centre, surrounded by a sea of winter flowers and two mismatched bouquets.

(:~:)

Nero’s stomach is a mess of nerves by the time he turns the last corner and sees the neon letters of _Devil May Cry_ reflected across the half-melted snow on the pavement, flickering in sympathy with the weak yellow streetlight before it.

The arched windows on either side of the door are dark and shadowed. There is no sign of life within, and Nero briefly wonders if his father and uncle are out hunting as he searches his pockets with half-frozen hands for the key Dante had given him a few years ago.

Then, he had wondered if all associates of _Devil May Cry_ had such a privilege – but it turned out neither Trish nor Lady had keys, and it had been one other thing to add to his list of suspicions as to Dante being his father until the Qliphoth and Vergil had happened. But, of course, it had been Dante trying to be present as an uncle without ever admitting they were family.

The memory makes Nero grin ruefully, despite the anxiety that still curls under his chest. In a way, the Sparda twins really _are_ similar to each other.

The doors swing open to his touch, unoiled hinges groaning in protest.

Nero steps into the pool of limpid light that filters into the dark confines of the shop and squints into the shadows. Nothing seems amiss, so he closes the doors behind him and feels for the light switch beside the door.

He flicks on the lights–

–and stares, gaping.

Dante groans where he is sat on the floor with his back to the couch, twisting his head away from the sudden light and burying his face in Vergil’s knee, using the dark-coloured bottle in his hand to shield his eyes.

“Noooooo,” Dante moans piteously. “Turn it offfffff.”

Nero’s father is sat on the couch, bowed over his knees, a second bottle in his bare hands, his usually pristine hair hanging over his face. He seems to be either completely unaware of his brother’s bristly face snuggling into his knee or too unbothered to stop it from happening.

Nero stands there for a full ten seconds silently evaluating his life choices before cautiously crossing to his father and uncle.

Dante peeks out from under his bottle when Nero approaches, and his bleary face breaks into an affable grin.

“Wait. Are you _wasted?”_ Nero says, staring.

“Nerooo,” Dante slurs affectionately, trying but failing to get up. “Oof,” he mumbles as he thuds back down on his rear, leaning against Vergil’s booted legs for support. “My favouritest bestest nephew,” Dante declares, toasting Nero with the bottle in his hand and taking another long swig. “Didja come to see your dad? S’ a good thing. He missed you.”

Vergil does not react. He still sits there as if frozen, face is hidden behind his hair, his coat carelessly rumpled.

A pause, where Nero looks around and finds no other bottles except for the two in his father and uncle’s hands.

“Want some?” Dante says, drunken face beaming. “S’ our dad’s old wine. Your grampy’s. It’s _strong._ ”

“I can see that,” Nero says, and feels the traitorous murmur of longing curl up within his chest. He stamps down on it viciously. “But I don’t drink anymore.”

Dante blinks up at him for a moment before pride suffuses his features and he reaches out to the only part of Nero he can reach. “You’re a smart one,” he says, patting Nero’s right boot affectionately. “Don’t end up like your old uncle Dante. Now, talk to your old man. Imma take a nap.”

Nero watches with morbid curiosity as Dante heaves himself onto the couch – it takes him three tries – slopping alcohol out of the bottle as he climbs up and slumps face down along the length of the couch, legs sprawled messily over Vergil’s lap, long crimson coat askew.

Dante falls still, face smushed into the armrest, and a few moments later, begins to snore.

Vergil still has not moved.

Nero takes another hesitant step closer. “Hey,” he says.

Nothing. Nero’s father could be a statue curled over the bottle in his hand, were it not for the subtle rise and fall of Vergil’s chest – a little too fast to be strictly normal.

Nero carefully crouches on one knee beside his father, bringing his eye level just below that of Vergil’s.

Vergil’s eyes are glassy under his messy curtain of white hair, staring at a singular point somewhere over Nero’s shoulder, his face a blank mask. His eyes are red-rimmed, bloodshot.

Something a little like fear rises behind Nero’s ribs.

“Hey,” he tries again, and when there is no response, gathers his courage, and whispers, _“Dad.”_

Vergil’s breathing hitches, and his eyelids flicker over his glassy gaze. Then his eyes slide to meet Nero’s, and slowly focus.

“Hey,” Nero says, his heart in his mouth. “You with us, old man?”

“Nero,” Vergil breathes, disbelief on his features. His gaze slips down to the bottle in his hand, then up to Nero’s face again, and Vergil raises the bottle to his lips and downs the rest of the bottle in one long draw.

“Don’t–” Nero darts out a hand, fingers clasping about his father’s wrist, but Vergil has already gasped in a wheezing breath, bottle emptied.

“There,” Vergil says bleakly, letting the bottle clatter to the floor and pushing Dante’s legs out of the way with his free hand so he can shift closer to Nero. “Now I’ll be able to see you for longer.”

“Dad,” Nero says, horrified, fingers tightening around his father’s wrist, Vergil’s hand reversing in his grasp to clasp sword-calloused fingers around Nero’s palm.

There is something not-quite present in Vergil’s red-rimmed blue eyes as he reaches out with his other hand and tucks it around the side of Nero’s jaw, long fencer’s fingers wrapping around the back of his neck and thumb brushing Nero’s cheekbone.

Nero feels the warmth of his father’s hand seep into his snow-frozen cheek.

“So this is the only way I can see you,” Vergil whispers, and to Nero’s mounting horror, a single tear wells up at the corner of his father’s right eye to trace a glistening track down Vergil’s pale face.

“No, I’m actually here,” Nero says, a pleading note rising in his voice despite his best efforts to keep it steady. He tightens his grasp on Vergil’s other hand. “I’m here, and I’m sorry–”

“No,” Vergil says, and the word comes with effort, as though Vergil is making an assertion of truth. His thumb runs over Nero’s cheekbone, achingly slowly. “The fault is all mine,” Vergil says, with broken certainty. “Mine alone. And now I can never see you again, except like this.”

 _“Dad,”_ Nero almost begs, something breaking within him. He has not called his father by that word in so long since the first initial days after the dome, but now it spills out of him again and again in a litany of concern. He makes to tug his hand out of Vergil’s in order to take him by the shoulders and try to shake him awake, but Vergil makes a desperate motion with his fingers and closes his hand around Nero’s wrist.

Nero notes with a slow surprise that it is his right wrist in his father’s hand, but he feels no fear, only his father’s warmth and desperation thrumming through his skin.

"Don’t go,” Vergil whispers, grief sweeping over his features like a terrible wave. “Don’t leave me.” His hand curls further around the back of Nero’s neck, buries fingers in his hair.

The echo of Nero’s own words to his father in the clearing takes Nero’s heart and shatters it to jagged pieces.

“I won’t,” Nero says, and his father’s fingers tremble in his as he grasps Vergil’s hand again. “I promise.”

Vergil makes a terrible noise, somewhere between a choked gasp and a hitching gulp, and turns his face away, another tear escaping under his eyelids to score a crystalline line down his cheek.

“No,” Vergil murmurs brokenly, even as his thumb traces slow circles on the back of Nero’s hand. “Everything I touch, I hurt against my will. My mother. Dante. You,” His eyes slide back to meet Nero’s gaze, and there is such inexpressible pain there that Nero cannot breathe. “I don’t deserve to be a father,” he whispers, shoulders hitching as he lowers his head, hair shuddering before his eyes. “I don’t know how to do anything that doesn’t hurt you.”

“Dad,” Nero pleads, free hand moving up to close around his father’s other wrist, up by Nero’s shoulder. “That’s not true.” His father’s pulse thrums against his fingers, terrifyingly shallow.

“I don’t know how to make you love me,” Vergil says. “I thought, in the dome– would dying for you be enough?”

Nero takes a sharp breath, tightens his hold on his father.

Vergil has closed his eyes now, misery on his face. “I don’t think dying would be enough,” he murmurs. “My mother died for me and I nearly dragged the world down to Hell before I realised she chose me. That she loved me.”

“Please,” Nero begs, shuddering too, now. “Please, stop.”

At this, Vergil opens his eyes to meet Nero’s gaze, and smiles a bitter smile, full of furled pride and sorrow. “Then I will,” he says, with finality, words slurring between his lips. “I’ll stop.”

Nero’s breath hitches as his father leans closer, pressing his lips to Nero’s brow, hands gentle around Nero’s fingers and cheek.

“Goodbye, Nero,” Vergil whispers into Nero’s hair, and then his head drops onto Nero’s shoulder, hands slackening as he goes limp.

Nero chokes in a breath and snaps up both arms to wrap around his father’s back, blind terror crashing down on him for an instant until he feels the whisper of his father’s breath slowly inhaling and exhaling against his ear.

There is silence in the air for a long while, filled only with the sound of Dante mumbling in his sleep, Vergil’s quiet breaths, and the shifting of cloth as Nero’s shoulders shake, his arms wrapped tightly around his father’s unconscious form.

Nero presses his face into his father’s collar, inhales the scent of old wine, woodsmoke, fresh parchment.

He remains like so for a long while, until his father’s warmth washes away the last of the cold winter air.

The grandfather clock in the corner strikes eleven.

“Okay,” Nero says to himself. “Okay.”

He carefully arranges his father to lean against the back of the sofa, tilting his head to the side to allow him to breathe easier.

Then Nero rises on stiff joints, takes two steps to the side, and heaves Dante’s dead weight – _ha_ ,Nero’s exhausted mind supplies– off the sofa and onto his shoulder.

“Pu’ me down,” Dante mumbles in his sleep somewhere by Nero’s hip.

“Lose some of that middle-aged flab,” Nero retorts as he struggles up the stairs, Dante limp as a ragdoll over his shoulder. The first door he opens leads to a mess of unwashed clothes and strewn magazines and electric guitars and scattered weaponry all over the floor between the door and the bed, and Nero makes a face.

Then he spies actual _ninja stars_ glinting like spiky landmines from among the debris, and Nero decides to hell with it all.

He crosses the hallway to another door, huffing under his uncle’s weight, and nudges the door open with his hip, flicking on the light with some difficulty.

The room he enters is simply furnished, bed neatly made, floorboards clean though cracked with age. But everywhere, in piles and stacks, over every available surface apart from the floor, are books.

Precise stacks of papers rest on the desk, with books weighing them down; two floor-to-ceiling bookcases are jammed in the room’s minimal remaining space, stuffed to overflowing with yet more volumes. There is a familiar hardcover book with a dark yellow _V_ on the beside table, placed at an angle as though someone had put it there before reaching up shut off the bedside light – the book of Blake poetry Nero had returned to his father.

Looking at this room, which so reflects his father, Nero feels a lump in his throat.

“Mmph,” Dante mumbles.

Nero heaves his uncle over to the bed and dumps him unceremoniously on top of the covers.

Dante rolls onto his side, drooling a little, and goes immediately back to sleep.

“Who’s the kid here, exactly?” Nero says exasperatedly, and pushes Dante to the side of the bed closest to the wall, working off his uncle’s boots. He looks speculatively at his uncle’s reeking socks and crimson coat before he decides that Dante has slept in worse.

The stairs creak under his boots as he goes back downstairs.

His father has slid sideways on the sofa since Nero left him, curling in on himself slightly in his sleep, as though to protect his vulnerable core.

Nero looks down at his father for a moment, at the Yamato abandoned at the foot of the sofa, and feels anxiety seep its way into his stomach again.

After a moment, he carefully reaches down and works Vergil’s arms out of his blue-black coat. Vergil’s limbs are pliant, nerveless.

Nero is just about to heave his father over his shoulder like he did with Dante before he pauses.

It seems almost disrespectful.

So, carefully, Nero slips an arm around his father’s shoulders and another under his knees, and lifts him.

Vergil’s head lolls against Nero’s shoulder as Nero makes his way up the stairs, arms straining under his father’s weight, heart in his throat, terrified that at any moment his father might wake.

But Vergil remains sound asleep, the tear tracks drying on his face, as Nero settles him on top of the covers next to Dante.

Nero pushes his father onto his side, relieves him of his boots, arranges a pillow strategically under Vergil’s head so that Vergil can breathe even if he should throw up from the alcohol, and then lowers himself to the floor beside the bed, exhausted.

The moon has truly risen by now, sending bright light over the brothers’ slumbering forms, turning their hair almost silver.

Nero watches his father sleep for a long while, his emotions jumbled within him. In a way, he had suspected after therapy that his father had not intended to hurt him during their training session, but to see the full extent of his father’s grief and pain laid out before him at once has left Nero raw, exhausted.

Vergil’s brow furrows in his sleep, and his hand shifts over the covers, as though searching for something.

Nero reaches across the covers, intending to clasp his father’s shoulder in reassurance, but Vergil’s hand finds his on the way there and captures his fingers in a tight grasp.

Nero inhales sharply, but Vergil’s face has already smoothed over, calm in slumber once more.

The moonlight filters over them both, and their clasped hands.

Nero eventually falls asleep by his father’s bedside, head pillowed on the covers, holding his father’s hand.

He does not dream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up: Breakfast, an awkward heart-to-heart, and Nero and Vergil finally go to therapy together.
> 
> I've extended the fic to four chapters, because this chapter was much longer than I thought it'd be, and I had to cut it somewhere. It was mostly Nero's therapy session and the Sparda mansion that look longer than I thought - even though I often talk to patients as a doctor, I had to take some time to work out the therapist's best approach to Nero's miscommunications and work out how she'd figure out the problem based on Nero's admittedly very sparse clues.
> 
> Thanks to everyone who's commented - I'm getting to making sure I've answered everyone soon.
> 
> A very merry Christmas to you and your loved ones, and I'll have more for you soon!


	3. And Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy new year!
> 
> 12000 words of hurt/comfort. Enjoy.
> 
> Music for this chapter: _I Have Made Mistakes_ \- The Oh Hellos

In the quiet, cool hours of the deepest part of the night, when the moon is past its zenith and birds yet to break the silence, Vergil wakes.

The taste of alcohol is still on his tongue, and his limbs are heavy with sleep. He floats on his side, the softest pillow under his head, one arm outstretched, where the moonlight shines silver over his son’s hand clasped in his.

Still half in a dream, Vergil blinks slowly at Nero’s white-haired head, pillowed on the covers at the edge of the bed, eyes closed in slumber.

Vergil does not recall the moment his mind must have slipped from drunken stupor to dreaming, but he is glad for this moment – this impossible illusion conjured from his most hapless longing, brought to the surface of his sleep-addled mind by inebriation.

He smiles faintly at his son, the familiar grief in his chest flaring in a dull ache. Nero’s fingers feel so real in his, sword callouses to sword callouses, warm against his palm.

He misses his son so much he feels as though he is fading – but already sleep is settling over him again, without a care for his shattered heart.

Vergil tightens his hold on Nero’s hand, and allows sleep to claim him once more, knowing that when he truly wakes his hand will be cold and empty, and his son still lost to him.

(:~:)

Nero opens his eyes to the sound of birdsong.

He blinks the grit from his vision. His joints ache from a night sat on hardwood floors, curled over the edge of the bed with his father’s hand in his. The morning sun filters through the window, turning the air to warm gold.

Vergil is still asleep on his side, exactly as Nero arranged him, with his fingers loose in Nero’s palm.

Dante, on the other hand, seems to have rolled over and snuggled up to his brother during the night, only the edge of his untrimmed beard visible where the rest of his face is smushed into Vergil’s back.

Nero spares a moment to wonder how Dante could possibly breathe, and then straightens slowly and carefully extracts his hand from his father’s. His heart clenches with faint guilt as his father shifts a little in his sleep, brows furrowing, fingers curling once over the covers where Nero’s hand had been–

–then Dante shifts closer to Vergil, mumbling disjointed syllables as his arm tightens around his brother, and Vergil relaxes back into slumber.

Nero stares at his father and his uncle for a moment – at the peace on Vergil’s face, at the way Dante’s grimy crimson sleeve is curled tight around his brother’s middle – and feels a pang for something he does not know, a connection that he could never fully understand. A bond between brothers, forged in hellfire.

He leaves them still sleeping there and pads softly from the room, trying in vain to work out the crick in his neck.

Nero is almost surprised when, halfway down the creaking stairs, he finds his stomach declaring that it is hungry – apparently a night of dreamless sleep had done him good, no matter how awkwardly he had hunched over the side of the bed for most of it.

He crosses to the fridge and opens it.

Nero stares.

The shelves towards the top of the fridge hold a meagre assortment of fresh food. The lower shelves, however, are composed almost entirely of beer, with a cardboard pizza box haphazardly stuffed on one shelf. A line of red tape runs between these two sections with a sticky note stuck to it.

Nero looks at the beer for a moment – but finds to his relief that the siren call of alcohol has dimmed a little with last night’s revelations. He extends a hand, picks up the sticky note to examine it.

There, in his father’s handwriting:

– _CROSS THIS LINE ON PAIN OF DEATH, DANTE._

Nero grins, replaces the note, and closes the fridge.

He crosses to the desk and picks up the phone. The steady whirr of the rotary phone is calming in the morning quiet.

“Hey, Kyrie,” he says, smiling into the handset. “Yeah, I’m okay. More than okay, actually. You know those omelettes you made last Saturday? Could you tell me the recipe?”

(:~:)

Vergil wakes, and immediately regrets doing so.

He slams his eyelids shut against the morning light that seems to spear like a keen-bladed lance right through his eyes and into his skull. A throbbing headache pulses behind his eyes, and his mouth feels like sandpaper – sandpaper that has had something crawl into it and die, that is.

Dante’s bristly face tickles the back of Vergil’s neck, his brother’s familiar weight behind him.

Face pressed into his pillow, eyes clenched shut, Vergil attempts to cast his mind back to the previous evening.

He recalls returning from the mansion with Dante, bottles in hand, and settling on the couch to trade memories of their childhood; the heady taste of Sparda’s wine on his lips, loosening his tongue, until he had found he was able to chuckle at Dante’s increasingly ludicrous retellings of their childhood exploits, even as the first tear at the sheer _scale_ of what he has lost over a lifetime slid unbidden down his cheek–

And then, nothing.

Except–

Vergil forces open his eyes and looks at his empty hand, stretched out on the covers towards the edge of the bed.

He had known Nero had only come to him in the early morning hours in dream, and yet a part of him had hoped that he might wake to his son at his bedside.

Vergil swallows the disappointment and wraps it tightly around the familiar grief at his core.

He shifts slightly instead, looks down at his brother’s filthy crimson sleeve wrapped securely around his middle, and stops, eyes sharpening into a glare.

Had he been _so_ inebriated the previous night that he had not been able to prevent Dante from climbing onto the pristine sheets without removing his coat? That is _dried demon blood_ there on the edge of Dante’s sleeve, for goodness’ sake. Vergil would have to bleach the sheets to get rid of the smell, and that does not even include the sheer mess Dante’s boots would no doubt have made–

His brother mumbles a little in his sleep and digs his unshaven face further into the back of Vergil’s neck, breath scented with old alcohol, and Vergil narrows his eyes, snatches up his pillow, and twists in place to smack Dante across the face with it.

Dante jolts awake with a muffled shout, limbs flailing as he twists away, and Vergil smirks when he sees Dante roll to a halt on the far side of the bed precisely in the square of light from the window and open his eyes to the full glare of the morning sun.

“Wha- _aaaaargh!_ ”

His brother’s screech sends knives into Vergil’s aching head, and he takes advantage of Dante’s momentary disorientation to club him squarely in the face with the pillow again as Vergil buries his own face in the mattress in an effort to filter out the noise.

“VERGIL,” Dante is yelling now, a pillow smashing against the back of Vergil’s head. “YOU SH–”

Vergil pushes out a hand and shoves Dante’s face away, fingers mashed against his brother’s unshaven beard, but Dante somehow manages to flail a pillow one-handed at Vergil and bash him repeatedly in the face–

They devolve into a horizontal brawling match, pillows flying, fingers curling into each others’ hair and wrenching it painfully against its roots, and Vergil feels a momentary spike of pain as Dante twists around and captures his arm in a lock, until Vergil reverses it and presses his full weight against the back of Dante’s neck in a half-nelson, like he used to do when they wrestled in garden as children.

“Do you yield, Dante?” Vergil chuckles darkly into his brother’s ear, smirking around clenched teeth.

Dante curses long and loud, face mashed into the mattress, and growls, “I yield.”

Vergil releases him, flops onto his back, and smirks at the ceiling through his pounding headache.

“Dammit, I always end up losing to that move,” Dante grouses beside him.

“You remain far too gullible,” Vergil replies, and raises a hand to block the pillow that arcs lazily towards his face.

They watch the sunlight on the ceiling for a long while, resting side-by-side.

“My head feels like a goliath sat on it,” Dante says eventually.

A sudden thought occurs to Vergil. “Actually,” he says contemplatively, “I recall father only taking two fingers of his favoured liquor every Saturday evening.”

“Two fingers at a time?” Dante snorts beside him. “You could have mentioned that sooner.”

“I had no intention of losing to you,” Vergil retorts. “Not even in this.”

“Hardass.”

“Lightweight.”

“Hey, look who’s talking– _wait._ ” Dante sits up abruptly, hair mashed in a riot around his head. _“Do you smell bacon?”_

Vergil opens his mouth to poke fun at his brother’s intellect, but stops when the familiar scent reaches his nose.

The two of them freeze for a long, long moment, both thrown into memories of waking together as children to the scent of their mother’s cooking drifting up from the kitchens.

“Uh,” Dante says, with the air of someone pulling something from the depths of their very, very uncooperative brain, “I think I was pretty wasted by then, but do you remember Nero being here last night?”

Vergil’s heart seizes within him.

He remembers the feeling of his son’s hand in his, Nero’s white-haired head pillowed against the covers at the edge of the bed–

Vergil’s limbs move of their own will. He registers the chill of the floorboards as he sets both feet on the floor, and hears Dante’s noise of surprise as his brother notes his own socked feet, as well.

Vergil registers that he may well have removed his shoes before sleep even when drunk, but for Dante to have done so as well? Nigh on impossible.

Someone had removed them for him.

Vergil steps out of the room, his head weightless, wild, terrible hope in his veins, and the stairs almost seem to float under his feet as he descends the corner and halts in place, the breath leaving him all at once–

 _“Nero,”_ he whispers, a choked, strangled sound.

(:~:)

The sound of his father’s voice startles Nero so badly that he almost drops the contents of the frying pan in his hands.

He looks up at the stairs, at the shock on his father’s face. Vergil’s features have blanched completely white, and he is staring at Nero as though he is a wraith.

Nero opens his mouth.

“Hey,” he says, lamely, and feels his ears immediately start to burn.

To Nero’s mounting concern, Vergil blanches _further,_ almost seeming to sway in place until Dante appears behind him with a clatter of uncoordinated limbs and slings a casual arm over his brother’s shoulders.

“Hey, it’s my favourite nephew!” Dante exclaims delightedly. “With _bacon!_ ”

“Oh, right,” Nero mumbles, looking at the pan in his hand. “Yeah. I, uh–” he risks a glimpse upwards again and looks away the moment he meets Vergil’s gaze. “I used what I could find in the fridge,” he says. “I– I hope you don’t mind. Dad.”

The last word seems horribly contrived, tacked on like an afterthought, and Nero looks down at the sizzling rashers of bacon in the frying pan and wonders what it would be like to drown himself in it. His shoulders hunch up around his neck.

His ears feel like they must be on fire.

“Of course,” Vergil voice is saying faintly. “I certainly do not mind in the slightest. You can– you can use anything there you might wish.”

Nero shovels slices of bacon onto three plates, and glimpses Dante looking back and forth between the two of them so quickly his eyes seem to blur in their sockets.

“This is Kyrie’s recipe,” Nero tries, desperately. “I don’t– I’m not sure it turned out that great, but I thought–”

“I am sure it will be fine,” Vergil says, sitting heavily in the only chair. He is staring at the omelette and bacon and buttered mushrooms like he cannot quite believe they are there.

Dante, of course, offers nothing but enthusiasm. He leans a hip on the side of the desk and picks up his portion with one hand, grinning at the fluffy eggs and steaming bacon as he digs in with a fork.

“Mmmmm,” he groans around a forkful of eggs. “S’ amazin’.”

Nero sets a full coffeepot on the desk and sneaks a glimpse at his father. Vergil has just sampled his portion and is now blinking slowly as he chews, eyes gradually losing their glassy appearance.

And then Nero becomes aware both Vergil and Dante have stopped eating and are staring at him, and his pulse ratchets into a thunder in his ears.

“Is…is it not good?” Nero ventures, left hand drifting up towards his elbow for the briefest instant before he catches himself.

“You’re kidding, right? This is the best food I’ve had in months,” Dante laughs briefly, before he turns serious. “But Nero, you’re not–”

“–You’re not eating,” Vergil says, his eyes flickering up to meet Nero’s for the briefest instant before darting away again.

“Oh,” Nero blinks, looking down at his own untouched plate. His stomach is flipping with nerves, but he settles on the edge of the desk in a mirror of his uncle, picks up a fork, and begins to eat. He glimpses his father relax slightly in the corner of his vision when Nero swallows his first mouthful, and this somehow unclenches Nero’s stomach, allows him to actually taste the food passing between his lips.

At first Nero finds the silence unbearably heavy, with nothing but the clinking of cutlery against plates and the sound of his uncle’s sloppy chewing to fill the quiet morning air; but then he catches sight of the faintest curve at the corner of Vergil’s mouth when he tastes the coffee, and a small measure of relief filters into Nero’s chest.

When all their plates are finished, and the coffee pot emptied, Nero gathers his courage, stands, and gives his uncle a look.

“Gotcha,” Dante quips, slipping off the edge of the desk and gathering the dirty dishes, pausing to ruffle Nero’s hair fondly as he passes, grinning all the wider when Nero ducks away and curses at him.

“Yell when you’re done,” Dante says as he strides away, the door to the small kitchen closing behind him.

In the sudden silence, Nero finds himself looking anywhere but his father.

“So, uh,” he begins. “I don’t know if you remember what happened last night?”

“I–” Vergil blanches. “I chanced to wake in the middle of the night and you were– you were at my bedside, but I was unsure if that was an illusion brought on by the effects of the wine. Before that, I recall foolishly rising to Dante’s challenge and drinking more than my fill.”

“Okay,” Nero breathes, a heady mixture of relief and disappointment filling him. Relief that his father does not recall his shaking, tear-filled confessions of the previous night; and disappointment that the memory of pressing his face into his father’s collar and the scent of woodsmoke, new parchment, and old wine there will forever be his alone.

Vergil is watching him with something like trepidation in his gaze.

“I have something to say,” Nero mumbles, because he cannot delay this any longer.

He tries several times to begin, but the words stick in his throat and he holds his left wrist with his other hand in an effort to stop himself reaching for his elbow again.

“Nero,” Vergil whispers, his voice strangled and guilt-ridden and _hurting_ , and Nero squeezes his eyes shut.

“I’m sorry,” Nero gasps, and the words tumble out of him, dragging with them a weight he did not know he was carrying. “I’m sorry.” He looks down at his boots, at the bloated wooden floorboards, fighting the shaking guilt in his hands.

The scrape of his father’s chair against the floorboards. Nero chances a glance up at his father, finds Vergil standing a careful two paces away, a lost expression on his features.

“What– what could you possibly have to apologise for?” Vergil says, voice hoarse. He is looking at Nero with the same expression he had in the forest clearing, that Nero now recognises to be a mixture of desperate concern and shuttered fear.

The memory twists the shard of guilt deeper into Nero’s heart. To make matters worse, he knows what he has to say next, and anticipatory fear wraps cold hands around his neck, too.

“I have a confession to make,” Nero says, and swallows against the surge of nausea. “I haven’t…I haven’t been sleeping. Or eating all that well. And I’ve been–I’ve been thinking about drinking. Thinking about it a lot more than I should have been.”

Vergil grows paler with each admission, leaning more heavily against the desk as though trying to ground himself. He makes an abortive motion towards Nero before stopping, hand returning to his side, an aching movement of strained control.

“And uh,” Nero mumbles, looking away, “When I sleep, I see you dying or dead in the dome.” His father’s sharp intake of breath skewers him through the core, and despite his best efforts, his left hand drifts to his right elbow and clenches hard around the joint. “Or sometimes it’s the memory of you, uh. Taking my arm,” he whispers, and hears Vergil make a small, choked noise.

“I know you wouldn’t do that again,” Nero says, breath coming shorter now, almost wheezing between his lips, “I just. Sometimes when I think about it, or about what happened in the dome, I find it hard to breathe.”

“Nero,” Vergil says, with such catching grief in his voice that Nero looks up despite himself, startled to see the pain in Vergil’s gaze. “Why would you apologise for this?”

“Because I pushed you away,” Nero says, and his voice cracks with guilt. “I should have told you. I’d barely slept in three days before our training session, and I just wanted to accomplish something, and so when you stopped the training I hated myself so much I pushed you away.” He pauses here, swallows the tears crawling up his throat. “But I didn’t– I didn’t want you to go.”

There. He said it. He has said it, all of it, and his father can do with it what he will. Nero stands there, breathing hard, and waits for the hammer to fall.

Silence.

Then: “You didn’t want me to go?” Vergil whispers, with something rising on his face, a wild sort of emotion that leaks through his tight veil of control.

Nero nods, minutely.

“I thought,” Vergil is saying faintly, “That you wanted no part of me in your life.”

 _“No, I–”_ Nero half-exclaims before he shutters his voice again, folding the emotion tight under his sternum. “I do want you,” he says awkwardly. “In my life, I mean. Dad.”

At the last word, while Nero feels like he may be dying inside from a mixture of longing or embarrassment or both, Vergil is looking at him with a stunned expression, like Nero has just offered him the galaxy.

The morning sunlight is golden, and the cold air somehow warmer, and the space between them seems lighter somehow. Nero finds the fingers of his left hand have loosened of their own accord on his elbow, and Vergil’s red-rimmed eyes are wide with something that can only be described as joy.

“Then I will do my best to be worthy of it,” Vergil murmurs, eyes shining with something other than the late morning light.

Nero swallows against the sudden moisture in his own vision.

“There’s another thing,” he says quickly, scrambling to speak before the tears can continue to come. “I’ve been going to therapy. It’s been…difficult, but it’s also helped me a lot.”

Vergil’s brow furrows. “Therapy,” he says, as though the word is foreign to him.

“Yeah,” Nero says, searching his father’s face. “You talk to someone, and they help you figure out your problems.”

For a terrifying moment, Nero wonders if his father will judge him for this and deem him weak – then Vergil nods, and says, “I am glad you are getting better.”

“Yeah,” Nero breathes, relieved. “I mean, it was tough at first, but it helped me realise I’d been hiding things from everyone, and I think,” he stops, then, as a thought occurs to him – a wild, impossible thought, too fanciful to even consider–

“Nero?” Vergil says, faint concern in his gaze.

“Could you–” Nero clasps his fingers tightly together. “Would you consider–”

His father looks at him, a crease appearing between his brows.

“Would you consider coming to therapy with me?” Nero blurts, before retreating back a half pace, ears burning.

“Would I–” Vergil looks at him, a dazed expression on his face. “Why do you ask?”

Nero opens his mouth as a half-dozen answers fly through his mind, but none seem to fully encompass the mess of emotion in his chest, so in the end he looks away and mumbles, “It would mean a lot to me.”

Vergil is silent for so long that Nero eventually looks back up, and the breath stutters in his chest when he realises his father has taken one long step closer, so they stand only an arm’s length apart.

“Of course,” Vergil says, his expression full of determination. “I will do any– that is to say, I will come with you. Of course I will come with you.”

“Okay,” Nero breathes, almost lightheaded with the rapid influx of emotion. “Okay.”

They stare at each other, within arms’ reach. Nero desperately wishes that either he or his father would close the meagre distance between them, but his boots seem to have glued themselves to the floor, and though Vergil’s hands twitch by his side, they do not move to reach for Nero.

Nero cannot bear it any longer, and he raises his cracked voice, calls in the direction of the kitchen. “Dante,” he calls, voice scratchy with unshed tears. “You can come back out now.”

The kitchen door opens with an uncharacteristically quiet creak. Dante takes a half step out onto the wooden floorboards, takes in Nero and Vergil’s expressions in one sweeping glance, and breaks into a brilliant grin.

All Nero registers is a flash of crimson leather before he finds himself squashed into a three-way hug, his face buried into his father’s collar, his left ear squished into Dante’s beard, and Dante’s arms wound tight around both Nero and Vergil.

 _“Dante,”_ Nero hears Vergil sigh exasperatedly, the sound thrumming through Nero’s cheek, but then Vergil’s arm shifts and Nero feels it settle around his back below Dante’s.

Nero chokes in a breath and slowly, jerkily brings his arms up to wrap around his father and his uncle, and feels their hold tighten around him in return.

Nero breathes in his father and his uncle’s scents, old wine and coffee, parchment, embers, woodsmoke, and feels their breath ruffle his hair. He feels as though his knees are jelly and his heart a reedy thrum underneath his ribs, but his father and uncle’s arms are tight around his weight, supporting him even if he should fall, and he smiles into his father’s collar, relief and safety and _warmth_ bleeding into his soul.

(:~:)

The rest of the day passes in languid, golden motes of time.

Dante is the first to break the three-way hug with a surprisingly logical observation that Nero must have taken the evening flight the night before, but doesn’t seem to have brought anything with him except the clothes on his back.

When Nero admits that he would quite like to wash up, Dante announces his intention to let Nero borrow some clothes, zooms upstairs, and then bounces back down with a truly horrendous crimson coat in hand.

Nero gapes at the coat and the wide leather strap at chest level that holds it halfway closed, staring at the remnants of dried blood in the lining.

Vergil, on the other hand, takes one look at the coat and rips it out of Dante’s hands, retorting that _“No son of mine would wear something as atrocious as this,”_ and that Dante had looked stupid in the coat at nineteen and Nero deserved far better.

Nero has no time to reel at his father calling him _son_ , because Vergil gestures at him to follow, all haughty elegance, and before Nero knows it, he finds himself in his father’s room with the wardrobe open and his father piling his arms full with a soft blue cable-knit sweater, a comfortable pair of trousers, and an expensive-looking but slightly worn button-up shirt.

Later, Nero emerges from the shower, tugging self-consciously at the light blue sleeve of his sweater, and though Dante jokes about and makes finger-guns at him, Nero sees only Vergil’s slightly startled look as he takes in the sight of Nero, and the faint smile that follows.

They spend the day doing anything and nothing – a three way pool competition that ends with Dante victorious; Nero napping on the sofa and waking with his father’s coat over him; then an excursion out to the market for groceries where more than one old lady with a basket pauses to coo at Nero and his father, whose outfits so obviously complement each other: Nero’s light blue cable-knit sweater and the soft grey scarf his father had insisted Nero wear, and Vergil’s long dark blue peacoat and light grey turtleneck.

By the end of the trip Nero’s ears are tomato red and Vergil has a faintly confused expression on his face, but Dante is grinning most of all.

They make pizzas for dinner, much to Dante’s delight, and Vergil’s look of pure murder at his brother when Dante stops working the dough to plant a floury hand on Vergil’s cheek is enough to make Nero laugh out loud.

Afterwards, Nero and his father stand at the kitchen sink together, Nero rinsing and Vergil drying, and the moment is quiet enough that there are no expectations between them, no raw pain or seeping blood or tears or choking breaths, just the soft sound of the tap and the squeak of cloth on ceramic.

It is nice _,_ Nero thinks. To just…exist, with his father.

Then all too soon the three of them step out into the winter evening, as snow begins to gently fall.

Dante ruffles Nero’s hair, deftly dodges Nero’s retaliatory punch, and saunters back inside with a jaunty wave.

And then it is just Nero and his father, standing in the empty street silhouetted in the soft lamplight, the neon letters of _Devil May Cry_ flickering above them.

“You sure you don’t want this back?” Nero says, plucking at the blue weave of the corded sweater with his free hand, the set of clothes he wore the day before tucked under his other arm.

“Keep it,” Vergil says, and there is an emphasis to the phrase, like he wishes to offer more than a simple cable-knit sweater.

They stand there for a moment, breath misting in the air, snow settling on both their shoulders. Nero notices that Vergil’s expression is beginning to shutter again, as though he is bracing for a blow.

“I’ll see you in three days,” Nero says clearly, quite deliberately holding Vergil’s gaze as he speaks. “Don’t be late. And,” he says, face beginning to heat, “Just. Call the house. If you want to find me.”

Relief filters into Vergil’s face, softening the corners of his eyes. “I will,” he says, and then the Yamato opens a portal into the winter air, and Nero manages a small, fledgling smile at his father before stepping through.

(:~:)

Three days pass in a gust of winter air; what seems like an instant.

Nero rises that morning feeling jittery, unable to sit still for more than a minute, and would probably have found it difficult to force down the mid-morning breakfast if Kyrie hadn’t make a point of preparing his favourite breakfast foods and distracting him with quiet conversation as he eats.

She presses a kiss to his cheek before leaving for the orphanage, and Nero is left in his flannel bathrobe and pyjamas and his _I love my girlfriend <3_ fluffy slippers, his too-full stomach a tense coil of nerves.

He climbs upstairs to change, and dithers for a moment before his gaze alights on the blue cable-knit sweater his father had given him. It reminds him of the lazy afternoon surrounded by his uncle’s laughter and his father’s hesitant smiles, sleeping on the sofa in the _Devil May Cry_ shop and waking to his father’s coat over him.

Sweater on and soft grey scarf in hand, Nero goes back downstairs and settles on the bench in the garden to wait for his father.

His pulse ratchets up a notch as a familiar rip in reality opens up beyond Kyrie’s winter tulip beds. Vergil steps through, and to Nero’s surprise, his father is not in full battle gear as Nero would have assumed; rather, Vergil wears the same dark blue peacoat and light grey turtleneck he had worn two days ago, and would have looked almost _normal_ if not for the Yamato in his leather-gloved hand.

Vergil’s sharp, assessing blue eyes flicker over Nero, lingering on the sharp curve of his cheekbone, which Nero knows has at least regained some of its previous colour after two days of semi-decent sleep.

And then Vergil blinks once and his lips twitch in a minute smile as his gaze fixes on Nero’s sweater, and Nero feels his ears burn.

“C’mon, or we’ll be late,” Nero says, rising and quickly turning to go so that he does not have to think about his father’s smile, and what it might mean.

They step out into the snow together, father and son, in a comfortable silence.

(:~:)

The therapist smiles brilliantly the moment she opens her office door to the sight of Vergil standing awkwardly behind his son.

“Nero,” she greets. “This must be your father.”

Vergil becomes aware his left hand has clenched so tightly around the Yamato’s sheath that his knuckles ache, but to the therapist’s credit, she gives the sword no more than a cursory glance as she extends a hand for him to shake.

Nero makes the necessary introductions, looking to Vergil’s assessing glance halfway between terrified and embarrassed, but the therapist welcomes them in as if it is the most natural thing in the world, and Vergil loosens his death-grip on the Yamato at his side.

Nero makes for a high-backed armchair, and Vergil stands on the threshold of the room for a moment, uncertain. But the therapist indicates a low sofa instead, wide enough to accommodate three people, and Vergil settles carefully on one end, Nero on the other, a cautious amount of space between them.

Placing the Yamato beside him, Vergil sits silently, trying in vain to control his thudding heartbeat, as the therapist opens the session and listens attentively to Nero’s retelling of the events three days ago.

Then Nero pauses after describing Dante’s drunken antics, and breathes an nervous laugh before obviously skipping over a subject to talk about breakfast the next day instead. Vergil furrows his brow, but the therapist does not interrupt Nero, so Vergil does not speak, either.

“So I just, told him about what I’d been going through,” Nero says, palpable relief in his tone as he nears the end of his story. “And I apologised for what happened during training.” He sinks a little into his sweater as he says this, ears reddening, and Vergil feels an unbidden tug in his heartstrings at the sight.

“That’s wonderful, Nero,” the therapist says, genuine gladness in her expression. “I’m very proud of you for taking those steps.”

“Nah, it wasn’t me,” Nero says, the blue yarn of his sweater rising about his neck as he scrunches up his shoulders around his flaming cheeks. “I just– I followed what you and Kyrie told me to do.”

“Nevertheless, that took courage,” the therapist says. She turns to Vergil. “Now, Mr. Vergil– ah, would you like me to address you as _mister_ , or is _Vergil_ acceptable?”

“The latter,” Vergil says, feeling as though all the moisture has left his mouth at once. Nero and the therapist seem to be on a first-name basis, so he must be as well.

“Okay,” the therapist nods. “Vergil, how did you feel when Nero confessed his troubles to you?”

“I was–” Vergil pauses, struggling to encapsulate his the riot of emotion that had filled him in that moment. “I was grateful,” he says at last, settling on a word that does not expose too much of his desperate relief then.

“Okay. How so?”

Vergil blinks slowly at her, all too aware of Nero’s scrutinizing gaze in the corner of his vision. “I was grateful because I had thought–” he swallows then, against the echoing ache. “I had thought Nero wanted nothing to do with me. I was glad I was mistaken in that instance.”

The therapist smiles at him. “I see. Anything else?”

_Guilt._

Vergil opens his mouth to deflect the question, but finds himself held in place by Nero’s expectant expression. “It grieved me,” he says eventually, “that Nero had struggled so much.”

The therapist tilts her head at him. “Why?”

“Because–” Vergil stares at her. Why should he have to explain this? To her, this stranger? To _himself?_

But the longer he remains silent, the more he finds that he has no single answer. To say _because he did not tell me_ sounds self-serving, to say _because he is my son_ sounds distant – and to say what he has not ever said out loud, that small four-letter word, would bare his soul for all to see and leave him defenseless.

“Because I do not wish to see him suffer,” Vergil says instead, hating the veiled coolness so obvious in his own voice, and sees disappointment flicker in Nero’s gaze. The sight pierces his heart, makes his left hand clench at his side momentarily where the Yamato would hang instead of leaning against the side of the couch.

“And what do you feel when you do see him suffer?” the therapist says, glancing at his hand and the Yamato beside him.

“I feel…” The self-hatred rises up within him again, burning at this throat. “Anger,” he says, and knows from Nero’s sudden stiffening that it had been the wrong thing to say.

The therapist does not react beyond making a small note in her journal. “Interesting,” she says. “Why anger?”

Vergil finds he has no answer beyond admitting his utter hatred of his weaknesses, his inability to protect those around him – how he can only hurt, and never heal.

So he remains silent, as Nero’s increasingly burning gaze skewers him to the back of the sofa.

“Okay,” the therapist says. “I can sense that’s an area that might be too difficult for you to explore at the moment. Why don’t we talk about something else? I notice you seem to find it hard not to have your sword in hand. Why is that?”

Vergil looks down to the Yamato, startled. His left hand has inched towards the grip without him realising it, so that his fingers just brush the tsukamaki.

He looks at the blade for a long moment, the only remnant of his childhood, his birthright, that had been with him the moment his life had shattered in that lonely playground as a child and had served him and sung for him like no other blade ever had; his only true line of defense, that meant security, and trust, and _safety,_ even when he had been so utterly alone.

“It is–” he draws in a breath, almost hitching in his chest. “It is power.”

Nero looks away abruptly, his hands clasped tight on his knees.

“Power,” the therapist echoes. “What is power to you, Vergil?”

Vergil looks at her, then, this human who has never bled out into the dirt beside a child of hers as a goliath loomed overhead, who has never fought to survive year after year like he has as his body fell apart around him; who has never felt the pain of abandonment, or understood what it was to be _unmade_ as he did when Mundus disassembled his soul and reformed him to Mundus’s own liking.

“Everything,” Vergil says, voice empty, slamming down mental walls around the memory of three glowing crimson lights above him, his screams echoing helplessly into the darkness. “Power is everything.”

Nero makes a horrible noise, somewhere between a derisive snort and a bitter laugh, and the therapist looks at him.

“It’s okay, Nero,” she says placatingly. “I think it’s worthwhile to listen to what your father has to say. We’ll work through this step-by-step.”

“Sure,” Nero says bitterly, looking away, and Vergil flinches despite himself.

“Vergil,” the therapist says, her voice soft, unassuming. “What, then, is weakness to you?”

The dome, Vergil’s demon energy seeping slowly from the ever-diminishing pool in his core, knowing that he was all that stood between his son and the hordes of demons still pouring out of the portal – the terrifying moment he thought he would not move fast enough, until the Proto Angelo’s greatsword had pierced his chest instead of Nero’s as Vergil threw himself in front of his son, then his fear for Nero had turned to horror when Vergil realised he had not the strength to pull out the sword fast enough to immediately aid his son, and he had wrenched the greatsword from his chest with a ripping scream, hands bloody on the jagged blade, the pain so great that his vision had turned white with it–

“It is worthlessness,” Vergil whispers, folding the memory of his own weakness deep within him, the shame burning like acid forever at his core. “Weakness is worthlessness.”

Nero’s clenched fingers are bloodless at his knees.

Vergil glances at his son’s face, at the thinned lips and intense eyes, and falters. Something a little like panic rises in his throat.

“Okay,” the therapist says. “You’ve said power is everything to you. What do you mean by _everything?”_

Vergil looks at her. The words he had said to Dante on the Temen-ni-gru all those years ago echo through the intervening time. Without power, he cannot protect anything – not himself, not his brother, nor his son.

Power is the only way to ensure the safety of those most precious to him, and he is willing to give anything for his son – even his own life.

“Nothing else matters,” he says with finality.

The therapist nods, opens her mouth to ask the next question–

–And Nero rises to his feet in a flash of blue, rage and blind hurt in his gaze as he turns on Vergil.

 _“Are you fucking kidding me?”_ he snarls, and it is like the words themselves are blades that find the spaces between Vergil’s ribs and plunge in, leaving him breathless, bleeding. Nero’s teeth are gritted as he takes one step forward, closing the space between him and Vergil. “Nothing else matters? _Nothing?_ I trusted you enough to bring you here and _this_ is how you repay me?”

“Nero,” the therapist says sharply, “Sit down. Your father is not finished speaking, and we will work through what he means with the same respect we offered you.”

“No, he can go to hell,” Nero hisses at the therapist, burning eyes never leaving Vergil, and Vergil opens his mouth to reply, breath heaving in his chest, but finds he cannot.

“I can’t believe you,” Nero says, the betrayal in his tone turning his words to jagged ice. “After all we’ve gone through. You’re still on that same power shtick you had when you tore off my arm.”

The memory turns Vergil’s stomach, bubbles acid behind his lips, and the Yamato’s presence seems suddenly to burn beside him. In this moment, Vergil hates himself so much he wonders why he tried so desperately to survive when he finally escaped Hell and dragged his broken body back into the human world.

Something within Vergil shatters.

He had been right, when he told Dante he should have died in Hell, caught at last by the remnants of Mundus’s legions. It would have been better if he had died, then Nero would have been happy, and Vergil would not have been able to wound those the cared for the most by simply existing.

He brings a hand to his neck, clasps it tight around the twin chains of his mother’s amulet and his father’s locket.

“You’re an asshole.” Nero is laughing now, bitterly. “After all we’ve been through, after all I admitted to you, you still think my weakness makes me worthless. I’ve had enough of this. I’ve had enough of _you_.”

“Nero!” the therapist barks, the first time she has raised her voice in the entirety of the session, and Nero twitches in place, looks towards her.

Vergil is finding it increasingly hard to breathe, the fine chains under his fingers almost cutting into his skin. His vision is greying at the edges, and he knows what comes next – what had happened to him time and again the first few months he escaped from Mundus’s power after Dante had freed him on Mallet Island.

“No,” Nero says, voice hardening, and Vergil cannot look away from his son, even as Nero takes another step closer, and his shadow falls over Vergil where he sits on the sofa.

“Weakness is worthlessness to you,” Nero says, his voice low and cutting, the voice of one who only wishes to hurt as he has been hurt. “Is that why you left my mother? Because she was weak, and human?”

Vergil feels his wrists and ankles flare with phantom ice, the rough metal of the manacles chafing away at skin and flesh, and Mundus’s cruel laughter above and before him as he swore to struggle on until his last breath – until one day, anywhere from a week to an eon into his captivity, when Mundus had visited him, drew a casual, fiery line of new agony across his broken body, and told him that the only person who had loved him ever since he was eight years old was dead.

He had broken to Mundus’s torture soon after. In a way, he had hoped then that the pain – both physical and internal, where a part of him grieves for her without ceasing – that the pain would finally stop, when Mundus unmade him.

It had not.

The gorge hammers behind his lips, now, and Vergil’s hands are numb and cold. He has to leave _now_ , before he is unmade again in a shadow of what Mundus had done to him–

“Is that why you abandoned her? Abandoned _me?”_

Vergil pushes past Nero and his fiery words, snatches up the Yamato in nerveless, icy fingers that are not his own, takes one blind step away, and slices a portal into the wall.

Nero’s scream chases after him, lashing at his back like a cat o’ nine tails, drawing invisible lines of blood. “And you’re doing it _again_! You’re leaving me–”

Vergil steps through the portal, hears it whisper closed behind him, and falls to his hands and knees on the dirty wooden floorboards of the _Devil May Cry_ shop, the Yamato clattering by his side as he loses his meagre breakfast to the floor.

The leavings of his stomach ruin his gloves, seep through the pristine sleeves of his dark blue peacoat, and Vergil is almost surprised there is no blood there – there had been, the first few times this happened in the early days after he came back to himself, the shell of Nelo Angelo having left scars within him as well as without.

_“Vergil!”_

The clatter of rapid steps down the staircase, and then a familiar arm winds under his chest, pulls him up so he leans sideways against a warm weight, shivering as sweat beads his face and he blinks slow tears out of his tunnel vision.

A frantic hand at his face. “Shit, Vergil, are you hurt? What happened?”

“Mundus,” he whispers into Dante’s shirt, one nerveless hand digging into the cloth of his brother’s pyjamas, staining the cotton there, and Vergil looks at it dimly, so, so sorry–

Dante inhales sharply. “ _Mundus?_ Where? Is Nero safe–”

Hearing his son’s name sends a shard of ice spearing into his ruined chest, and Vergil chokes on a breath.

“No,” he gasps, the bitter taste of bile still on his lips. “Not– here. Not– alive. _In my head.”_

Vergil watches understanding dawn on Dante’s face, and nearly weeps as his brother pulls him closer and begins to gently wipe the tears and disgusting bile from Vergil’s chin with the edge of his own pyjama shirt.

“’S ok,” Dante says, voice rough with emotion. “I’ve got you. You’re here with me. You’re not with him, the ugly bastard.”

“Nero said–” Vergil shivers violently. “He accused me of– but I wasn’t– and I couldn’t–”

Dante stills. “What did he say?” he asks, and his eyes narrow when Vergil shakes his head numbly. _“What did he say?”_ Dante growls with greater intensity, eyes glittering.

Vergil feels the phantom chains tighten around his limbs, ice-cold, spearing pain into his wrists and ankles–

“Shit, Vergil, _breathe–”_

Gulping in a breath so desperately it burns his throat on the way down, Vergil sinks into his brother’s arms and focuses on the scent of old coffee and fresh embers in Dante’s shirt, in the feel of his brother’s hand on the back of his neck, and attempts to drive the chill of Mundus’s chains from his skin.

He does not succeed.

(:~:)

By the time Nero turns the last corner into his street, his boiling rage has cooled into a simmering pool within his chest – not hot enough to snap, but still present, spreading painful heat down to his snow-numbed hands.

He lets himself in out of the afternoon light, shakes the snow from his boots, and stalks in socked feet to the den, where he sits heavily on the couch and puts his head in his hands.

A long, slow exhale, soft and steady into the silence except for the ticking of the clock.

Nero glances up at it. Kyrie would still be at the orphanage at this hour, or off to the opera house. In a way, Nero is glad for the solitude. He needs to think.

The therapist had stayed silent for a long while after Nero’s outburst, watching the unmarked wall that Vergil had stepped through, letting Nero breathe.

Then she had quietly told him that it was unwise to continue in such a high state of emotion. At Nero’s sharp retort, disbelief at what his father had done still ringing in his ears, she had looked up at him with a serious expression and told him she had cause to believe he had been mistaken.

Then she had advised him to call his father, and ended the session.

Nero presses his closed eyes into the heels of his hands, and heaves a sigh.

He doesn’t understand.

He doesn’t understand how the father that Nero had found drinking away his sorrow over losing his son could be the same man who declared that power was the only thing that mattered to him a half-hour ago.

“So power is everything, huh,” Nero snorts derisively. “And weakness is worthlessness.”

_And am I nothing to you?_

But no, Nero’s raw, exhausted mind supplies. What was it that Vergil had said back then, when he believed that he could only see his son in drunken stupor?

Vergil had said then that everything he touched he hurt against his will. That he believed that even dying for Nero would not be enough to make Nero love him.

That doesn’t sound like a father who would choose power over his son.

Nero scrubs a hand over his face, a headache starting behind his eyes.

And when Nero, in the depths of his blinding rage, and accused his father of choosing power over his mother, power over _him_ , there had been a moment where Vergil had gone sheet-white, his vision glazing over like it had when Nero had found him staring into space with a bottle in hand. That is strange too, if Vergil cares about power over everything else.

And last time, Nero had pushed his father away when the last thing his father wanted was to leave.

The answer is somewhere in this convoluted mess, just beyond Nero’s reach, and he struggles desperately for it.

_Call him, Nero._

“Dammit,” he whispers, pushing away the echo of the therapist’s last advice upon him leaving the office. “I know.”

He rises, pads over to the phone in the hallway, and dials the familiar numbers to the _Devil May Cry_ shop.

Nero stands there, handset pressed against his ear, trying to decide what to say should his father pick up, as the phone rings, and rings, and rings on, until the simmering dregs of Nero’s anger fade to faint concern.

The ringing stops.

 _“Devil May Cry,”_ his uncle’s voice says, somewhat breathlessly. “I’m sorry, but we’re closed for business at the moment. Please call back later if–”

“Dante,” Nero says, and hears his uncle take a sharp breath. “Is…is my father there? I need to talk to him.”

“Nero?” Dante’s voice turns hard, an echo of on the Qliphoth, when he had told Nero that Vergil was his father.

There is an unidentifiable noise somewhere in the background, beyond the static of the phone line. A horrible, guttural wheezing, like a wounded animal.

 _“Shit,”_ Dante’s voice says, from somewhere further away, and then there is a clatter of rapid steps and a rustle of movement, and Dante’s voice clears over the static again. “Kid, I don’t think you should talk to him at the moment,” Dante says quietly, voice like an ice wall, unyielding and firm. “It wouldn’t be good for him.”

“What–” Nero’s breath hitches. “What do you mean?”

“Dammit, Nero,” Dante curses, as the sounds rise again behind him. His voice grates against the phone, strained with tight control. “What did you say to him?”

“I–” Nero whispers, slow horror seeping into his veins. “I don’t know. I said– I said a lot of things. Is he– is he okay? Is that him?”

“He’s–” Dante exhales, a long, hissing breath. “He needs me right now. I need to go.”

“No, Dante–” Nero says frantically, pressing the phone painfully into his ear, as though the shorter distance would keep his uncle on the line. With the handset so close, he can hear the noises more clearly now – tearing, anguished gasps.

“Please,” Nero pleads. “Did I– did I hurt him?”

A terrible pause.

“Yes,” Dante says, almost harshly. “But he’ll survive this. He always does. He’s been surviving every day since before you were even born.”

Dread sends Nero’s heart plummeting to his feet. “What– what do you mean?”

“Shit, kid,” Dante growls, and Nero flinches away from the phone at the shuttered anger so obvious in his uncle’s voice. “He’s been alone and on the run from hordes of demons since he was eight. The Yamato was all he had. Then at nineteen, shortly after he met your mother, he fell into Hell. Mundus captured him there.”

At the word _Mundus_ , there is a terrible sound, like a broken-off scream, and Dante curses and the phone clatters against a hard surface.

“Dante?” Nero says, his hands beginning to shake where he holds the phone against his ear.

A scrabbling noise, and Dante’s voice hisses rapidly into the line as though he is right by Nero’s ear. “He’s suffered more than you and I could ever know,” Dante says, and there is a terrible note of guilt there that spears right through Nero’s chest. “That ugly bastard tore him apart.”

Horror crawls up Nero’s throat, holds him fixed there, choking him.

“I don’t have time for this,” Dante says, with grim determination in his tone. “Kid, you mean a lot to me, but don’t call back for a while. My brother needs me right now.”

Nero hears the _click_ of the handset against the receiver, and then the short, rapid tone of the lost connection.

For a moment, he stands there, stunned, staring at the handset in his hand, breaths coming increasingly quickly.

Some part of him registers guilt, but _terror_ overwhelms all else; terror that he has hurt his father, physically and emotionally. Terror that he might be the one who caused his father such pain.

“No,” he whispers hoarsely.

He needs–

His fingers shake as he dials the number to the orphanage. It rings through to voicemail, and Nero nearly curses, black spots swimming before his vision, as he slams the handset back onto the receiver, snatches it up again, and calls the opera house.

The receptionist’s voice is sunny and all-too-cheerful, and informs him that Kyrie is not present at the opera house.

Nero fumbles the handset back onto the wall, takes a moment to wheeze in two desperate breaths, knees shaking, then scrabbles to call the therapist’s office.

He manages to sound halfway normal when the assistant answers, but she informs him that the therapist is in a session with another client and cannot be disturbed, and Nero hangs up before she can even offer to take a message.

He holds onto the phone with one hand, pressing it into the receiver, bracing himself against the wall with his other hand, gasping in panicked breaths.

“Dad,” he whispers, caught halfway in the triangle of winter sunlight lancing in from the window above the front door, as though the light slices him in half as he curls over his stomach, nauseous. “Please. Dad.”

He has not been so terrified for his father since the dome, when his father had taken the first greatsword for him, and when the goliath had thrust Red Queen through Vergil’s stomach.

The haunting, choking wheeze he had heard in the background behind Dante’s voice echoes in his ears.

Nero cannot lose him.

Not like this. Not by his own hand.

Nero slowly slides to the floor, head pressed to the wall under the phone, as though pleading with it, cold, shivering, arms wrapped around his knees.

He waits. He waits and waits, like he used to do in the orphanage when he was just old enough to run, and the other children had laughed at him, saying that he was the only one with a father that had abandoned him. He had stumbled to the front corridor and waited for someone, _anyone_ to come for him.

Nero cannot wait anymore.

He crawls to his feet, fingers digging into the wallpaper, shuddering with dread, wracked with guilt.

The phone nearly slips in his shaking fingers, and it takes three tries, but he dials the number to the _Devil May Cry_ shop again, and waits, trembling, leaning against the wall for support.

The phone rings on, and on, until Nero is sure it will ring on forever–

 _“Devil May Cry,”_ Dante’s clipped voice says,and Nero nearly sobs with relief. “We’re closed for the night. Call back tomo–”

“Dante,” Nero whispers, as the first tear wells up over his eyes and slices a burning path down his cheek.

“No, Nero,” Dante says, tiredly. “Your dad doesn’t need this right now. Hang up.”

Nero breaks.

A stifled sob escapes him, his free hand pressed over his mouth, hot tears cascading down his cheeks to spatter against the handset. His head collides with the wall with an audible _thunk,_ and he slides down the wallpaper nervelessly, dragging the phone by its cord with him.

“Nero?” Dante’s tone changes to one of faint concern.

“Please,” Nero pleads, barely breathing between the gasping sobs that shudder up out of him. _“Please.”_

“Shit,” Dante says, sounding horrified. “Nero, are you _crying?”_

“Please,” Nero repeats, an endless plea pouring out of his lips as he curls over the stabbing pain in his chest, forehead pressed to the wall. The floorboards are knives at his knees. _“Please,_ Dante.”

He hears Dante curse, and then a familiar voice in the background, raw and exhausted but _there_ , and Nero sobs harder as he presses the phone to the curve of his jaw, hard enough to bruise, straining to hear the merest whisper of his father’s voice.

The phone goes dead.

Nero stops sobbing abruptly, staring at the phone in his hands. He is too shocked to even move; he becomes aware he has stopped breathing, but there is a disconnect between the knowledge and any intention to start breathing again, and so he just stares, and stares, chest still, until shadows start to creep into the edge of his vision and he feels cold, like the empty air in his lungs and the air outside is nothing at all–

A flash of blue light behind him, reflecting off the glass panes of the front door, throwing his long, warped shadow out before him for an instant.

Nero gasps in a breath so desperate and long-awaited that he feels dizzy with it, and he twists in place, looking back towards the kitchen, as his spine finally gives up holding him upright and he tumbles forward over his knees towards the floor.

The slam of the back door against the wall, the clatter of something against the ground, rapid footsteps – then there are hands on his shoulders and then arms around him and Nero falls into the familiar scent of old wine and fresh parchment.

Nero chokes, face buried in his father’s shoulder, and his breaths turn to hitching sobs of relief.

“I’m sorry,” he gasps. “I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry–”

Vergil’s breath ruffles his hair, incredibly close and warm, and Nero leans into his father’s embrace, arms wound so tightly around his father’s middle that his arms ache with the effort.

“Nero,” Vergil whispers, one hand resting on the back of Nero’s neck, the other around Nero’s back, holding him steady. Vergil’s voice is scratchy with spent tears, and his breathing is just about slowing down to normal, but he is so wonderfully warm and _alive_ that Nero feels the relief shudder through his bones.

“I hurt you,” Nero chokes, fighting to control his breathing. “I hurt you and I didn’t even realise.”

“It is of no consequence,” Vergil says quietly.

“No, it was,” Nero, fighting to look up at his father. “I hurt you,” he says. “It _matters_ when you’re hurt.”

A slight furrow appears between Vergil’s brows. “Does it?” He says, confusedly.

“Yes, it does,” Nero says, shivering in the cold. “It should matter. And it matters to me.”

Vergil pulls him into an embrace again. There is a tentative comfort slowly growing here, the first time they have held each other without agony or pain, or spilt blood between them.

“Then yes.” Vergil’s breath is a susurration of air over Nero’s hair. “You did hurt me.”

“I’m sorry,” Nero says, slowly warming in his father’s hold.

“I accept,” Vergil says, with such perfect, plain clarity that Nero wheezes a laugh. He cracks open his eyes and stares momentarily at the sloppy T-shirt and drawstring trousers his father is wearing, so obviously borrowed from Dante.

Nero closes his eyes again, sinking into the warmth. “I just– I didn’t understand what you meant about power being everything to you. That weakness was worthlessness.”

Vergil dips his chin to press his cheek into Nero’s hair. He stiffens for a moment after this, as though terrified he has overstepped, but Nero tightens his arms around his father, and Vergil relaxes, face pressed Nero’s hair.

“For most of my life, weakness meant defeat and pain,” Vergil whispers, as the angle of the sun slowly changes through the window, sunlight suffusing them both.

“I’m sorry,” Nero repeats. “I thought you were– I thought nothing ever affected you. That you couldn’t be hurt.”

Vergil gives a dark chuckle. “If only it were so.”

Nero nods into his father’s shoulder. “Dante– Dante mentioned something about Mundus.”

Vergil’s hisses audibly at the name, his shiver shuddering through Nero’s frame, and Nero twists to look up at his father.

But Vergil simply shakes his head and buries his face deeper into Nero’s hair, as though grounding himself. “He was a demon,” Vergil says quietly. “My father had previously defeated him. I thought that I too could best him. I was a fool.”

Nero blinks at the shifting sunlight. “When was this?”

“I was nineteen,” Vergil says. I had just left your mother not too long before.”

At the mention of his mother, Nero pauses, waiting with bated breath, hoping–

“She was–” Vergil’s breath hitches, and his hand moves from the back of Nero’s neck to the curve of his jaw, thumbtip to cheekbone. “She was like sunlight after the longest rain. Brilliant and untouchable, but warm.”

Nero does not dare speak, lest he break this spell, and lose what chance he has of learning of his mother forever.

Vergil’s voice holds a longing ache. “I had been alone for a decade by the time I chanced to meet her. She was the first person to love me since my mother died, since I thought my brother dead as well. For a while it was as though we could be together forever. That I could afford to be human again.”

“It sounds like she was amazing,” Nero says, the old longing filling his soul, for a mother he has never met.

“She was. But we were so young,” Vergil says. “And I had Sparda’s blood. There were yet dangers in the world beyond my power to halt, and I knew what it was as a child to have my life changed in the span of an instant.”

“So you left her,” Nero whispers, and feels his father flinch.

“I did,” Vergil says, and the regret lies heavy in his voice. “I did not know she was… if I had known, I would have done differently. But I needed power.”

Nero swallows against his dry throat. “Why?”

“Because,” Vergil says, holding him close, “I never wanted to feel as I did as a child again, abandoned and helpless with only the Yamato in hand.”

Here, with his father holding him safe, Nero thinks he begins to understand.

“Mundus wished for a general to serve him,” Vergil says, with only the merest hitch in his breath at the words. “He attempted to make me one. I resisted him for what had to have been months, despite the pain, and the blood. I had planned to fight until my dying breath, but he–” Vergil breaks off.

Nero gathers his courage, raises his head off Vergil’s shoulder, closes his eyes, and presses his forehead against his father’s.

“It’s okay, Dad,” he whispers.

To Nero’s relief, Vergil does not push him away. He breathes in and out once against Nero’s cheek.

“One day, he told me your mother had died,” Vergil says, voice trembling against Nero’s ear, leaning against Nero’s temple. “And I finally broke.”

Nero chokes in a breath at this, curls his arms tighter around his father.

“If he had told me of your existence,” Vergil says, “I would have fought, and fought, until I had no breath left to live.”

“Okay,” Nero mumbles, because he has no words for this, no words for the enormity of this revelation.

“I am sorry,” Vergil says, curling into Nero’s shoulder desperately, as though terrified his son will pull away from him. “I am sorry for taking your arm from you. I should have allowed myself to fade away. It would have been better than hurting you.”

Nero takes a sharp breath, the phantom pain shooting through his right elbow, and he feels his father tense.

“No,” Nero says sharply, sitting back to glare at his father, hands sliding to grasp his father’s hands tightly when Vergil reaches for him as though terrified he will disappear.

“I accept your apology,” Nero says. “But don’t ever say you would rather die. I don’t want you to die for me.”

Vergil looks at him, frowning. “But I–”

“I want you to live,” Nero growls, fingers digging into his father’s palms. “I want you to live, and we’ll work this out, and you’ll be my father, and grandfather to my kids when Kyrie and I decide to have them. Get it, asshole?” There is no heat in the word.

Vergil is looking at him now with astonishment.

“And power isn’t everything,” Nero continues fiercely. “You have Dante, and me, and Kyrie. We’re here. And you can never be powerful enough to make sure nothing ever hurts us.”

“I can,” Vergil says, slowly. “If I was powerful enough in the dome, I could have protected you. Kept you from harm.”

“We protected each other, dammit!” Nero growls. “I watched your back, as you watched mine! Like you said, remember? And you are _not_ going to throw your life away for me, because I–” he breaks off, face flushing.

To Nero’s surprise, Vergil looks almost as though he is on the verge of tears, raw vulnerability in his gaze.

Vergil reaches for Nero’s cheek, running a gentle, sword-calloused thumb over his cheekbone. He leans forward, presses his lips to Nero’s forehead, and Nero freezes at the memory of Vergil doing the same days earlier.

“I’m so proud of you,” Vergil whispers into Nero’s hair.

Nero feels tears rise in his throat.

He relaxes into his father’s embrace, Vergil’s cheek against his temple, as the sun lances through the window above the door to warm them both.

They rest like so for an indeterminate time, until the sun’s rays turn orange.

Nero’s breathing has long since returned to normal, and he feels his father’s heartbeat as a slow drum under his cheek. His joints ache against the hardwood floor, and he feels his father shift as well, minute movements that betray Vergil’s growing discomfort.

Nero sits back a little, meets his father’s gaze.

They both immediately flush – Nero’s ears turning cherry red, Vergil trying to return to his usual impassive expression but failing miserably with the dried tear-tracks on his face and the sloppy t-shirt.

“Uh,” Nero croaks. “Want some tea?”

Vergil nods, blinking rapidly. His left hand keeps drifting towards his hip as though to grasp something there, only to clasp empty air.

Nero half-flees into the kitchen for the kettle, and stares down at the Yamato, carelessly abandoned on the tiled floor, just within the threshold of the back door.

Vergil passes him, avoiding eye contact, and stoops to pick up the Yamato. He looks almost ridiculous standing there barefoot, hair unslicked and hanging into his eyes, dressed in one of Dante’s death metal T-shirts and loose cotton trousers, feet bare.

“Um, take a seat in the den,” Nero says as he fills the kettle, the awkwardness climbing up his throat. “I’ll be there in a bit.”

“Very well,” Vergil says, still not quite meeting Nero’s eyes.

Nero takes a long as possible to make tea, but all too soon, he finds himself carrying two steaming mugs into the den.

Vergil is sitting ramrod straight on the sofa, the Yamato leaning against the coffee table. He looks as though he might have been attempting to regain some of his usual aloof composure in the past few minutes, but even with re-slicked hair, he has managed nothing of his usual elegance.

Nero hands Vergil a cup of tea and cradles his own as he sits next to his father.

Silence.

The space between them is less than a handsbreadth, and it burns with the memory of tears and vulnerability and emotions unsaid. They sit there, each sipping at their mugs of tea, tiptoeing around each other’s space, trying to figure out the new middle ground between them.

“I’m–” Nero tries. “I’m glad you came,” he says, and hides his face by taking another sip of tea.

A long pause.

“You needed me,” Vergil says quietly.

The space between them grows more comfortable after that.

They sit there in almost cozy silence, until Nero finds his eyelids slipping closed, exhaustion claiming him, and he leans his head against the back of the sofa and falls asleep.

He thinks he imagines, in the moment before he falls asleep properly, someone tucking a warm throw around his shoulders.

(:~:)

Kyrie lets herself into the house a the sun’s edge falls below the horizon.

The house is dark, unlit, and she frowns as he passes into the den and flicks on the light–

She presses a hand to her mouth to hide her delight.

Nero and Vergil are both asleep on the sofa, but there is a patterned throw around Nero’s shoulders, and Nero’s head has slipped down onto his father’s shoulder.

Vergil’s cheek rests in Nero’s hair, and his hand has slipped partially over Nero’s beside him, so that their fingers barely touch.

The hall phone rings beside Kyrie, and she snatches it off its hook before it can wake Nero and his father.

“Hello?” she says softly into the phone.

“Kyrie,” Dante says, concern in his voice. “Are they okay?”

“Yes,” Kyrie murmurs. “I think they’re more than okay.”

She giggles quietly as she exchanges a few more words with Dante, hangs up the phone, and goes to make supper.

Nero and Vergil sleep on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up: A quick couple snapshots of father-son therapy, more bonding, Dante comes to therapy, and then a very Sparda Christmas.
> 
> Thanks for the lovely comments and kudos/bookmarks! I've replied to nearly everyone who's commented except for those in hte last two days, I think. I shall get to them after work tomorrow. Have a very happy new year!


	4. And Smiled Among The Winter's Snow

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "This is going to be devastating," my twin WafflesRisa said, halfway through planning this chapter.
> 
> It was.
> 
> Also, this fic is going to be five chapters long instead of four now, because I can't do anything by halves.
> 
> Music for this chapter: _Brother_ (feat Gavin DeGraw) NEEDTOBREATHE

The first thing the therapist does is smile when she opens her office door to the sight of Vergil and Nero.

“Nero, Vergil,” she says, genuine gladness in her voice as she lets them in.

Vergil follows Nero into the room automatically, trying to hide his tension by settling onto the sofa as calmly as he can.

His son sits quite a bit closer to him than their previous session, close enough to touch should Vergil lean a little to his right, an echo of the comfortable closeness when they had settled much the same way on the couch at Nero’s home after they had finally bared their souls to each other.

Vergil attempts to stop himself from flushing at the memory. He knows he has not quite succeeded when the therapist looks perceptively at him.

“I’m glad to see that you two seem to have been talking to each other,” the therapist says. “What happened?”

For a moment, Vergil is almost terrified he might have to explain the sheer extent of his undoing after their last shared session, but then Nero shifts closer, the merest whisper of movement that allows him to feel his son’s warmth at his side.

“Last session, I…I hurt him,” Nero says, and there is residual guilt there in his voice. “I hurt him, and there was a moment where I thought I would lose him, and I just…broke.”

Vergil glances at his son, at the way Nero’s hand is gradually curling into a tight fist at his side.

For a moment, Vergil dithers, unsure of what to do. Then the answer presents itself to him, and though a part of him rebels at the thought of showing his vulnerabilities before this almost-stranger of a therapist, Vergil moves.

Carefully, not looking at the therapist or Nero fully, Vergil shifts his hand so the last two fingers of his right hand just brush the back of Nero’s wrist.

At the touch, Nero’s fingers uncurl from their white-knuckled grip.

The therapist smiles. Vergil looks pointedly away.

“Yeah, so I…wasn’t doing great,” Nero says, still with that same raw quality in his voice, but now with a note of determination, as though he is pushing himself to speak the truth. “And uh. Dad saw that I needed him, and he came. Even when he wasn’t doing so well himself after I said all those horrible things.”

Vergil tries in vain to stop his heart from simultaneously clenching with heady disbelief and skipping with joy, as he has every time Nero called him _Dad_ since their reconciliation two days ago.

“And how did that make you feel, Nero?” the therapist says gently.

“Uh. Kind of blown away, I guess,” Nero mumbles. “That he cared that much for me. That he could forgive me. And we talked, and I understand why I was wrong to explode like that last time.”

“I’m glad,” therapist says, smiling at Nero before looking towards Vergil, and Vergil lifts his chin, unwilling to back down even in the face of his own mounting anxiety.

“Now, Vergil,” the therapist continues, “Why don’t you tell us your perspective of what happened?”

“…I think Nero’s retelling was accurate enough,” Vergil says, fighting to get the words past the tightening of his throat.

“I don’t doubt that,” the therapist says. “But it’s always worthwhile to hear from the perspective of everyone involved. Your perspective matters as well.”

Vergil pauses at that, blinking. “I…Nero said something similar.” He feels sudden warmth at the back of his hand, looks down to find Nero’s hand resting on his, and his heart swells in his chest. “He said it matters if I was hurt. I didn’t think so at first.”

“Nero’s right,” the therapist nods. “What you feel matters. Your opinion matters.”

Vergil nods numbly, because he does not know what to say to that, and the words are sticking in his throat like they did the previous session. For a terrifying moment he wonders if Nero will take his silence as insult again, but a glance at his son finds Nero looking at him with calm patience in his gaze, and Vergil feels such an overwhelming gratitude for it that he finds the words at last.

“Nero did hurt me,” Vergil says, “But he has apologised for it. And I’ve come to realise that I…I do not excel in expressing myself.” He looks away, residual embarrassment lingering at the confession.

“And _I_ tend to assume things when he didn’t say them,” Nero volunteers, nudging Vergil with a casual shoulder as he barks a laugh. “Pretty volatile combination, huh.”

To Vergil’s surprise, the therapist breaks into a brilliant smile. He feels his son jolt beside him, a testament to Nero’s own astonishment.

“You both should be extraordinarily proud of yourselves,” the therapist says. “It always warms my heart whenever I see two clients as determined to understand and reconcile with each other as you do. You have found the root cause of your previous misunderstandings, and with more work you can learn to recognise the patterns before they occur.”

“Ah,” Vergil murmurs. He had not thought his realisation that momentous, but now the therapist has laid it out plainly in front of his eyes, Vergil begins to understand.

A wild, unbelievable hope rises within him.

He can learn to be with his son without harming him.

“Ah,” Vergil finds himself saying again, stupidly, his hand beginning to tremble at his side as the true enormity of what is being offered to him seeps into his core.

Nero’s hand shifts to slip his fingers through Vergil’s, holding his shuddering hand tight.

Vergil blinks rapidly, trying to clear the sudden mistiness from his vision, and though the therapist smiles at him without censure and does not comment on it, Vergil has to hide his face by turning away to clear his throat.

His son’s hand remains in his the rest of the session, sword-callouses to sword-callouses, and Vergil holds on just as tightly.

(:~:)

“Literature?” Nero says dubiously as they duck into the warm golden light of the bookshop.

“Poetry, to be exact,” Vergil replies, reaching out without fully looking to fix Nero’s snow-spotted scarf where it has slipped partway off Nero’s shoulder.

Nero feels heat flare all the way from the tip of his frozen nose to his ears at the casual affection, but Vergil has already turned towards the back of the shop with an uncharacteristic air of excitement.

“Why specifically poetry, and not prose?” Nero says, following his father between the overstuffed bookcases. When the therapist had suggested the two of them learn each others’ interests, Nero had expected perhaps a tour of his father’s bookshelves at the _Devil May Cry_ shop.

What he hadn’t expected was his father dragging him across the city to visit all of Vergil’s favoured bookshops. This, the third, is a brightly-lit establishment with oak floors and warm yellow lighting, the scent of coffee and cinnamon in the air.

“Poetry holds completion in a handful of words,” Vergil replies, halting by a floor-to-ceiling bookcase in the deepest corner of the shop that reads _Antique Volumes._

“Right,” Nero replies, not really understanding at all.

“Now, prose has its own value,” Vergil says, examining the shelves speculatively. “There are subjects and artistic expressions that prose conveys quite well.”

Nero watches his father, at a loss.

“And yet,” Vergil says with a note of triumph, pulling a volume from the shelf with one leather-gloved finger, “Poetry is complete in itself even with fewer words.”

Nero peers at the etched gold lettering on the leather volume. “John Keats?” he says.

“Yes,” Vergil says. “He–” A pause, where Vergil looks sharply at Nero, and Nero attempts to look less clueless.

“You have no idea who that is, do you?” Vergil says, disbelievingly.

“Uh…should I?” Nero says, feeling a little like he did as a child when Credo had drilled him on the history of the Order of the Sword and he had failed spectacularly.

Vergil looks almost comically appalled for a moment, and sighs. “It appears I must do much to further your education,” he says.

“Hey,” Nero says shortly, irritation spiking at him despite his best attempt to push it down. He wishes he had not spoken the moment he closes his mouth, but Vergil has already looked at him, sudden anxiety in his gaze, and Nero fights a flinch.

Nero opens his mouth to speak–

“No,” Vergil says, halting him with a raised hand. “I apologise. The fault is mine. I did not mean to disparage your upbringing.”

Nero blinks at his father. “Okay,” he says. “I accept.” The tension seeps out of him as he watches his father’s shoulders drop with relief.

The air still holds a faint awkwardness.

“I, uh,” Nero says, looking at the book in his father’s hands, “I wouldn’t mind learning. I mean. If you wanted to teach me.”

Vergil looks at him then, with the same suppressed emotion on his face that Nero has come to associate with _joy._

“It would be my pleasure,” Vergil says, and Nero flushes and sinks into his scarf in an attempt to hide his burning ears.

His father flips over the book, looks at the pricing label, and raises an eyebrow. “But perhaps not this particular volume,” he says. “This is excessive even by antique standards.”

Nero catches faint wistfulness in Vergil’s expression as he replaces the volume.

“C’mon,” Nero says. “I’ve got something planned I want to show you.”

Vergil smiles at him faintly, a genuine smile of gratitude, and Nero feels his heart warm as they step out into the snow together.

(:~:)

The stumble out into the evening snowfall, weaving their way through the thinning crowd.

“Bet you didn’t expect _that,_ now did you?” Nero laughs, shaking confetti out of the light grey wool of his scarf as he re-winds it around his neck.

“You _liked_ that?” Vergil breathes through the spiking headache between his eyes, his ears still ringing from the shuddering power chords. “I’m aware I spent much of the past two decades in the underworld, but that…that is what suffices for music for today’s youth?”

“Yeah,” Nero grins, seemingly unaffected by the lambasting of sound and light the two of them have received in the last three hours. “It makes people feel alive.”

“I can see that,” Vergil says, wincing at the sound of his own voice as they pass under the glare of a streetlight. “It would be difficult to think otherwise with the headache this induces upon the unwary observer.”

Nero barks another laugh into the wind, breath misting into the air, and Vergil reaches out to brush the confetti from his son’s hair before he fully processes what he is doing.

Nero’s step hitches, and twists in place to stare at Vergil.

Vergil freezes, hand still buried in Nero’s hair, a few stray scraps of confetti fluttering to the ground where he had brushed them from his son’s hair.

Nero’s cheeks are growing steadily red from something other than the cold air.

Vergil snatches back his hand and makes a point of slipping on his gloves as he begins to walk again, the soft ghost of his son’s hair still on his fingers as he slides them into leather.

He hears Nero jog a few steps to catch up, and then his son is at his side again.

“So what’s music for you then, old man?” Nero says, as they turn into a street of Christmas lights, chaotic swirls of multicoloured fairy lights strung over the streetlights above, bright-lit shops spilling warm scents and laughing children onto the cobbled pavement.

“Paganini,” Vergil murmurs, still trying to calm the thudding of his heart. “Or Tchaikovsky, as a start.”

“Okay,” Nero says. “The violin, then. I know you used to play.”

Vergil stops abruptly. “How did you know?” he says, astonished.

Nero looks slightly abashed. “Dante,” he says.

Vergil fights the urge to roll his eyes. “Hmm,” he says, looking across the street to a park, where gleeful children slide around an ice-rink on wobbling skates. Almost as though by fate, a lone violinist stands at the edge of the rink, under the warmth of a glowing heat-lamp, Christmas tunes drifting into the cold winter air.

“You know, I think you should play again,” Nero says, tucking his hands into his pockets as follows Vergil’s line of sight to the violinist.

“I would have to relearn nearly everything,” Vergil says, a wistful note entering his voice despite his best efforts.

“So?” Nero replies.

Vergil turns from the laughing children and the faint sounds of the violin.

“I suppose you’re right,” he says, and Nero’s smile is a gift greater than all he has received so far that day.

They walk on, until they reach a suitably quiet spot. The Yamato opens a tear in cold winter air, and Nero, to Vergil’s surprise, gives him a quick hug before stepping through the portal.

Vergil finds himself so stunned by it that he stands there staring like a fool for long moments after the portal closes, a smile tugging at his lips.

(:~:)

Vergil lets himself into the _Devil May Cry_ shop as the clock strikes ten.

“So, quality father-son time?” Dante says by the desk, sliding on his coat as Vergil takes off his own to shake off the snow clinging to the wool.

“Save the maudlin chatter, Dante,” Vergil says, with no real heat.

Dante makes a noise of acknowledgement but does not quite meet Vergil’s eyes as he steps towards the door.

“You’re going out?” Vergil says, folding his coat over his arm.

“Hunting,” Dante says, with his usual breezy ease – but there is an edge that that catches Vergil’s attention and makes him scrutinise his brother more closely.

At first, nothing seems amiss in the jaunty line of Dante’s shoulders.

Vergil realises abruptly that it has been a few days since he has talked to his brother properly apart from casual comings and goings – on the way to Fortuna for therapy, or going out to explore the city with Nero, returning late at night to find his brother snoozing in a chair, or halfway through a pizza.

And then he looks at the desk, and realises there is nothing there save for a pile of crushed beer cans – no pizza boxes, no takeout bags.

“Did you eat?” Vergil says, as Dante heads towards the door.

Dante pauses with his hand on the door edge, half turning his head to the side so that the streetlight beyond casts the line of his nose sharp aquiline.

“I wasn’t hungry,” he says with casual ease, and then the door opens with a gust of frozen air and Dante disappears into the snowfall.

Vergil stands there for a long while, watching the door swing in the wind then come to a standstill.

He cleans up the shop before retiring for the night, and counts a dozen empty beer cans before the desk is cleared. Dante’s half of the fridge, when Vergil checks it, holds the same two boxes of old pizza as it did that morning when he had left for his outing with Nero.

Vergil falls asleep that night with a faint sense of disquiet buzzing under his skin.

(:~:)

The cold is a good thing, Dante realises approximately four hours in, as King Cerberus carves a line of hissing, melted snow in the frozen ground, flames leaping from Dante’s strikes to burn the Hell Antenora to crisp.

The cold numbs his fingers, seeps into his mind. It allows the world to narrow to whichever weapon is in his hands and his next target, allows the hollow pit of his stomach to echo the empty winter air. He has never been afraid of the cold, and it does him this favour now, taking whatever foolish thoughts he had been ruminating over in the warmth of the shop and freezing them behind icebound walls.

He beheads a Fury with a wordless yell, slamming his devil sword into icy stone, and crouches there for a moment, breathing in sharp, icy breaths in the snowstorm, each inhale a faint spike of pain in his lungs that fades to the forge of his demon powers.

He remains smiling jauntily in challenge as the next straggle of lesser demons approaches, mere hazy shapes in the blizzard, skittering forward through the dense trees.

The smile has frozen onto his face by now, and Dante is glad for it.

In the same way he is glad the dome has brought such good business even now, two and a half months from the incident – allows him well-paid, night-long hunts where Vergil has spent the last few days finally spending time with his son.

It is a good thing, Dante knows. He is happy for them.

It is all he has ever wished for, from the moment he returned from Hell with Vergil.

Dante’s lips twist painfully, his grin sharper than the bite of the December air, as he loses himself to the hunt.

(:~:)

The sun is peeking over the horizon by the time Dante fumbles the key into the lock at the shop door, numb fingers slipping on the icy metal.

The poisoned gash on his thigh still sheets blood down his leg, soaking into his boot. It isn’t anything dangerous – won’t even come close to killing him, but it would certainly hurt like hell for a few days.

Dante doesn’t care.

He lets himself in, dripping demon guts and congealing blood onto the floor, and collapses onto the sofa without a care, not bothering to flick on the lights. The ceiling fan turns lazily overhead in the shadows, caught in the initial gust of the opening door.

Dante stares up at it, like he has so many times over the decades, and wonders.

He wonders why it still hurts so much, when he had known this would happen.

He had always ended up alone, from the moment he stumbled out of the smoking ruin of his home as a child. Any others had always left in the end – Trish and Lady had wandered in and out of the shop over the years, but never stayed long. Patty had stuck around for a surprisingly long time, like an annoying, much-younger sister that remained the single bright spot in his otherwise grey-filled days after Mallet Island.

Then she had left to finally be with her mother, and Dante had been so very glad for her, even as the days had turned from gold etched with the pink she so often left in little touches around the shop, to shades of black and white again, grey shadows creeping in on the unwashed floor, piles of pizza boxes and beer cans Dante couldn’t find the energy to clean up littering the space that Patty had kept so proudly clean.

Morrison had joked that Dante was moping after Patty left, then. Dante hadn’t corrected him beyond an easy, sarcastic joke that left Morrison chuckling as Dante knew he would.

His days had blurred to brief bursts of bloodlust during hunts, subsisting on pizza and strawberry sundaes when he felt his body needing food, and then sleeping from a mixture of alcohol or exhaustion or both, where he could forget he existed and float in nothingness.

And then Fortuna had happened, and Nero’s existence had hit him with all the weight of a freight train, and Dante had finally felt something similar to true happiness when he entrusted the Yamato to Nero.

But Nero had Kyrie, and Fortuna, and Dante had an empty shop, and his debts, and demon hunting and pizza and sundaes.

And that was that. His existence.

Dante watches the shadow of the ceiling fan slide across the ceiling in the slowly brightening air of morning, and knows he doesn’t quite deserve to hurt this much – not when he has suffered less than Vergil has, not when his brother and his nephew have finally gotten their blockheaded brains to communicate and become father and son, like Dante has wished them to for so many months.

A wheezing laugh escapes him, and Dante presses a filthy sleeve to his eyes, blocking off the growing sunlight.

He had gotten used to Vergil being here, like the maudlin fool his brother always accuses him of being.

He had gotten used to coming back to the shop, coming _home,_ to the lights still on and Vergil reading on the sofa, to waking to the smell of coffee, or sleeping curled around his brother when Vergil had one of his bad days.

He had gotten used to Nero’s cursing when Dante runs a hand through his nephew’s hair, and he had gotten used to Kyrie’s hot chocolate, which so reminds him of his mother’s.

Dante had forgotten, in the heady warmth of his brother and his nephew’s presence in his life, that eventually they would leave him. Because Vergil and Nero were father and son, and they should rightly prioritise each other.

Exhaustion pulls at Dante’s limbs, hunger growling in his stomach and thirst at his throat, and he glances at the fridge, thinks of the effort it would take to cross to it and remove the pizza from its box within.

He gives up before he even begins, and pulls a magazine from the side of the sofa to spread over his eyes. The cut on his leg is bleeding only sluggishly now that his demon powers are taking over, fighting the poison that slows his healing – the blood would stop in a few hours, by Dante’s reckoning, and he does not have the energy to bind the wound when it would mean having to stagger upstairs to the bathroom.

He falls into blessed oblivion, where he does not need to exist, and he can push away this meaningless pain until it numbs again, and he can function as he always has, before he knew what it was to have family again.

(:~:)

Vergil closes his room door behind him, shrugging on his house robe over his pyjamas against the chill morning air.

The door to Dante’s room is still half open like it was when Vergil retired last night, the bed unmade. Vergil stares at it for a moment before registering that the blankets have not moved at all from their configuration the previous night.

Frowning, Vergil makes his way downstairs.

Then he catches the scent of blood halfway down the steps, and his heart seizes within his chest as his gaze alights on his brother’s blood-soaked form on the sofa by the door – until he realises Dante’s chest is rising and falling, and there is a magazine over Dante’s face, strategically placed to block out the light from the window.

Anger comes quickly on the heels of relief.

Growling, Vergil stalks down the last few steps, leather slippers – a gift from Nero – slapping on the wooden floorboards.

“Dante, you’d better clean up after this–”

Vergil halts mid-sentence as he registers the pool of congealed blood under the sofa itself. There is a large gash in Dante’s trouser leg directly above the blood, with the raw edges of a wound still visible within – no longer bleeding, but nowhere close to fully healed.

And Dante, usually so responsive to Vergil’s taunts, has not moved.

Breath stuttering in his chest, Vergil crosses the last few paces to his brother, presses an urgent hand to Dante’s shoulder.

_“Dante.”_

Dante does not respond except to mumble and curl further into the cracked leather of the sofa, and Vergil shakes his brother _harder,_ panic rising in his throat, until Dante groans and lifts a hand to shift the magazine off his face.

“Dante,” Vergil says, trying to hide his relief as his brother blinks blearily up at him.

“Whuzzup?” Dante mumbles thickly, bloodshot eyes blinking in the sunlight. “Everythin’ ok?”

Vergil looks at his brother, at the gashes in his clothing and the demon blood and the wound in his leg, and growls, “What the hell, Dante.”

“So you’re okay?” Dante says, half-sitting up with urgency. “You okay, Nero’s okay?”

“I–” Vergil stares. “Yes.”

“Okay,” Dante mumbles, collapsing back and shielding his face with the magazine again. “Then I’m just gonna– I’m just gonna go back to sleep now.”

“Dante,” Vergil hisses, hand tightening on Dante’s shoulder.

“Wha?”

“You’re injured,” Vergil says, hovering his free hand over the wound in Dante’s leg and wincing at the heat that emanates from it.

“It’s jus’ a bit of poison,” Dante slurs into the magazine. “I’ve dealt with worse. Didn’t bleed to death, right?”

Vergil’s chest clenches. “Don’t even joke about that.”

Something in Vergil’s voice must have gotten through to Dante, because Dante peeks out from under the magazine, bloodshot eyes blinking up at him.

“Verge?” Dante says. There is a glassy quality to his gaze that terrifies Vergil, reminds him of his own hours limp and nerveless on this same sofa when he thought Nero hated him.

“Get up,” Vergil says. “We’re cleaning that wound and then you’re having breakfast.”

“Not hungry,” Dante says with an automatic air, and Vergil looks at him, new terror twisting his stomach.

“You an’ Nero have plans,” Dante is mumbling now, shrugging Vergil’s hand off his shoulder. “I got back late. Jus’ need some sleep. Go on.”

Vergil slides an arm under his brother’s shoulders and yanks him upright roughly, uncaring for the blood and the grime, and Dante screams into Vergil’s shoulder as his leg shifts.

Vergil nearly drops Dante at the sudden shout, his brother’s breath hot against Vergil’s shoulder, his ear ringing. He watches the wound reopen in Dante’s leg to seep bright scarlet droplets down onto the cracked leather of the sofa.

“Shit,” Dante pants into Vergil’s shoulder, breathing a trembling laugh that shudders through Vergil’s arm.

New moisture seeps through Vergil’s robe, and he drops his chin to find his brother’s forehead beaded with sweat where it is pressed into Vergil’s shoulder, Dante’s eyes screwed shut against the pain.

The shock still keeps Vergil frozen there for a long moment before he maneuvers his brother to sit upright against the back of the sofa.

“I’m okay,” Dante groans.

“Shut up,” Vergil growls at his brother as he quickly climbs the stairs to the bathroom and snatches up the small first-aid kit that someone – presumably Trish or Lady, now he thinks about it – had placed there long ago.

“Sorry,” Dante mumbles when Vergil returns. “You’re s’posed to go see Nero today.”

“Never mind that,” Vergil hisses, getting to work cutting away the ruin of Dante’s trouser leg.

Dante stays very still as Vergil works, face pressed into the back of the sofa, sweat and grime-stiff hair hanging in his face. A week ago he would have been leaning into Vergil’s shoulder, using every opportunity to get into Vergil’s personal space, but now his head lolls against cracked leather instead, as though trying to stay as far from Vergil as possible. Every now and then Dante flinches when Vergil pokes a particularly sore spot – the poison must be quite something, for the pain to affect Dante like so – but Dante is quick to laugh after every hiss of pain, making fun at his own expense, even as the smiles do not quite reach his eyes.

The sleeves of Vergil’s robe are covered with rusty stains by the time he is finished, but Dante’s leg looks much better, covered in white bandaging.

Vergil cleans up, throws his housecoat in the laundry, and comes back with a glass of water for his brother.

Dante has not moved from where Vergil left him, leaning pliantly into the back of the sofa as though he is a rag doll, but he obediently drinks the glass of water that Vergil hands him.

Vergil pretends not to notice how after the first sip, Dante finishes the rest of the glass in almost-desperate gulps.

Something the therapist had said in their latest session comes to Vergil – something about how those closest to each other hide the most secrets out of love.

“Dante,” Vergil says as Dante lowers the glass and closes his eyes.

“Hmm?” Dante slurs, glass slipping between his fingers. Vergil catches it.

“I think–” Vergil stops. Was this how Nero felt, when Nero had asked him the same question? “Would you consider coming with Nero and I to our next session?”

“Next session of what?” Dante says, far more clearly than before, but still not looking at his brother, his head turned carefully into the sofa.

“Therapy,” Vergil says, and is rewarded with the sight of Dante snapping open his eyes fully to meet Vergil’s for the first time that morning.

“What?” Dante says, disbelief in his voice. “Why?”

“I think–” Vergil considers all the possible options, and chooses the one that his brother will find the least offensive. “It would mean a lot to Nero,” he says, and gathers his courage. “And to me.”

“Okay,” Dante says, and Vergil is momentarily stunned by the ease of the reply, until Dante continues, “I’ll do whatever I need to do to support you two. You know that, Verge.”

“…Yes,” Vergil says, swallowing his many questions. “Yes, I do.”

Dante smiles at that, a shadow of his usual cocksure smile, the smudges under his eyes suddenly all-too-prominent.

Dante complies as Vergil nudges him to eat a whole bowl of oatmeal, with ample cream and strawberries, cracks his usual jokes as Vergil half-carries him upstairs, and laughs easily as Vergil helps rinse the dried blood from his hair. Vergil stands guard outside the bathroom door as Dante finishes cleaning up, and Dante does not meet his eyes when he emerges, though he allows Vergil to help him step over the mess that is his room and settle him into bed.

Vergil watches as Dante rolls over onto his uninjured side, facing the wall, immediately asleep in the way Vergil had been so envious of as a child.

He looks at Dante’s chest rise and fall for a long while, until he is sure Dante is deep asleep, and then rises and goes downstairs.

There, Vergil stares at his brother’s blood on the sofa and on the floorboards, and crosses over to the phone to call his son.

Nero picks up on the second ring.

_“Hello?”_

“Nero,” Vergil breathes.

 _“Dad?”_ Nero’s voice is instantly alert. _“Why do you sound like that? Are you okay?”_

“No, no,” Vergil scrambles to say. “I’m– I’m quite unharmed. But we’ll have to postpone our plans today, I’m afraid. It’s– well. Dante.”

_“Dante? What about him? Is he hurt?”_

“No, he’s–” Vergil sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose in frustration. “He was slightly injured on a demon hunt. Nothing that won’t heal in a day or two, but I think there’s something wrong. Something he’s not telling me.”

 _“You mean he’s hiding something?”_ Nero says.

“I suspect he is,” Vergil says. “He seemed…different. Detached.”

_“You think it’s something to worry about?”_

“I don’t know,” Vergil sighs. “I wonder if I offended him somehow. But I haven’t been present here these past few days except to sleep. I don’t know how I could have managed to offend him.”

 _“Well, I wouldn’t get too caught up on it,”_ Nero says. _“Dante always cheers up eventually. You know him. And he apologised to me even when I didn’t bring it up after he shut me down last time, remember? He’s probably aware you’re worried about him. He’ll be fine.”_

“Very well,” Vergil says, a measure of relief seeping through him at his son’s assurances. “I’ll let it be. Though I was concerned enough that I– I should probably have asked you this before doing so, but I invited him to our next therapy session.”

 _“Oh,”_ Nero says, and Vergil feels his heart leap into his throat.

 _“Of course that’s okay,_ ” Nero continues, seemingly genuinely happy with the idea, and Vergil lets out a breath he did not realise he was holding.

“Thank you, Nero,” Vergil says, and knows he has succeeded in suffusing the phrase with all the words he cannot yet bring himself to say out loud when Nero sputters a little into the line.

 _“You too, Dad,_ ”Nero says in a quick jumble of syllables, and hangs up before Vergil can do anything except smile.

Promising himself that once his brother recovers, Dante will have a very long date with a mop, a bucket, and the entirety of the shop floor, Vergil collects the required equipment and gets to work cleaning up the mess his brother made of the couch and floor.

(:~:)

Dante is entirely too cheerful the day of the therapy session.

“So, how does it actually go?” he says, plucking at the collar of the red sweater that Vergil made him wear in lieu of his filthy battle gear. “Does she look into the depths of your soul?”

Vergil fights the urge to roll his eyes. In actuality, he is too relieved to have his usual exuberant brother back to be truly annoyed.

“No, Dante,” Vergil says as he slices a portal into the wall. “Her words polish you like a stone in water. It pains you for a while, until you realise you have smoothed over into something new.”

Dante looks at him, startled into silence, and Vergil hides a smirk as he steps through the portal into the freshly shoveled snow of Nero and Kyrie’s garden.

The back door opens as soon as the two of them emerge from the portal, and Nero leans out into the chilled air and beckons them inside, shoulders hunched against the cold.

Stepping into the warmth, Vergil spares a moment to run a hand through Nero’s hair where ice crystals have fallen from the doorframe, and Nero flushes to the tips of his ears at the touch.

Vergil glimpses a pained smile flash across Dante’s face, but it is gone again so quickly and replaced with Dante’s usual easy grin that Vergil wonders if he imagined it.

Dante’s grin remains in place as they head out into the street together, and no matter how many times Vergil glances at his brother during their walk to the therapist’s office, Dante’s shoulders remain languidly loose. Only the slightest hitch in his step belies the still-healing wound in his leg.

The therapist welcomes them in, shaking Dante’s hand as he grins charmingly at her, and then all three of them are settling on the sofa – Nero and Dante on either end, and Vergil between them.

“So, Dante,” the therapist says. “I usually begin sessions by getting to know my new clients better. Why don’t you tell me a little about yourself?”

Vergil looks at his brother, who sits languidly, one arm thrown over the back of the sofa.

“Ah, I’m not that interesting,” Dante says. “Son of Sparda, legendary devil hunter, all that stuff. I’m sure Vergil and Nero must’ve covered most of it by now.”

At first, Vergil finds nothing strange in Dante’s voice – only casual ease. And yet there is a glint there in his brother’s gaze that reminds Vergil of the look in Dante’s eyes during battle – where Dante can almost turn laughter into a weapon.

“All the same, it’s worthwhile to listen to everyone’s point of view,” the therapist says.

“Well, up to eight years old the story’s much the same as Vergil here,” Dante says with a jaunty smile. “Then we got separated, and I grew up mostly alone. Opened the devil-hunting shop at nineteen, saved the world a couple times, found out I had a nephew _while_ saving the world yet again _,_ and then my brother came back from the dead and here we are.”

A pause, where Vergil stares at his brother and considers the sheer number of events Dante glossed over in that particular little speech. Even Nero has shifted beside Vergil, peering at Dante with a minute frown.

The therapist makes a note. “Okay,” she says. “Why are you here?”

“What do you mean?” Dante says, meeting her perceptive gaze straight on, as though in challenge.

“Nero came here because he wanted to understand his father. Vergil came here to build a relationship with his son,” the therapist says. “Why are you here, Dante?”

“Because Vergil asked me to come,” Dante says, a serious note entering his voice as he continues, “and I’ll do anything to help my brother and my nephew.”

Vergil has to look away at that, the heady emotion rising in his throat. Nero nudges Vergil’s hand with his in a brief gesture of support, and Vergil spares his son a smile of thanks.

But when Vergil turns back towards his brother, Dante’s eyes flicker away, hurt ghosting over them before his ever-present easy grin returns.

By the tilt of the therapist’s head, Dante’s momentary lapse has not escaped her. “So how do you feel now that Vergil and Nero have begun to work things out?” she says. “How has this impacted you?”

“Impacted me?” Dante’s grin curves wider, even as his gaze narrows ever so slightly at her. “I’m pretty much content. I’m happy for them. Took them long enough, but they’re actually a family now.”

Vergil notes with a slow, twisting feeling in his gut that Dante has not automatically included himself in that phrase – the family that Vergil and Nero are.

“I see,” the therapist says. She turns to Vergil. “I can sense you have something you want to say, Vergil. Why don’t you share it with us?”

“Ah,” Vergil says, blinking in surprise. “I–” He looks at his brother, at the way Dante is carefully avoiding his gaze even now, and wishes desperately that he had the same way with words in expressing himself as Blake does through poetry.

“Our family,” he murmurs, eventually. “ _Our_ family, Dante.”

Dante’s gaze slides to meet his for the briefest instant, and he looks almost surprised for a moment.

“Yeah,” he says. “That’s what I said.”

“No, you didn’t,” Nero interjects from behind Vergil. “You said _a_ family.”

For a moment, the smile freezes on Dante’s face.

And then he relaxes, and says breezily, “Did I? My mistake.”

“Hmm,” the therapist says, tapping her pen against her knee, as though considering something. Then she straightens, looks Dante dead in the eye, and says, “Was it a mistake, Dante? How do you feel like you fit in with Nero and Vergil’s relationship?”

Dante looks at the therapist, then, and Vergil catches a glimpse of the terrifying devil hunter within – sly intelligence with a sharp, blade-like smile hidden behind a veil of joking laughter.

“I’m not getting you,” Dante says lightly, even as his demon powers obviously flare just under his skin – enough that Vergil feels it, a handsbreadth from his side.

“Hey,” Nero is saying shortly to the therapist, “What are you implying–”

Heart thudding in his chest, Vergil rests his hand on top of Nero’s, and Nero’s mouth slams shut with an audible click.

“It’s okay to admit that you’re finding difficulty adjusting to new dynamics in the family, Dante,” the therapist says. “Your feelings are just as valid as Vergil and Nero’s.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, lady,” Dante says, baring his teeth in a grin so sharp that Vergil almost imagines fangs.

“I don’t think it was a slip of the tongue when you described Vergil and Nero as _a_ family, and not _your_ family,” the therapist says quite calmly, undaunted. “Vergil and Nero have made leaps and bounds in learning to be affectionate with one another, and it is understandable if you would feel some measure of discomfort with how things have changed.”

Dante takes his arm off the back off the sofa.

Vergil tenses automatically in response, left hand drifting towards the Yamato at his side as he stares at the line of his brother’s shoulders.

Dante props his elbows on his knees and leans forward with predatory, easy grace. The smile is still there, etched onto his face like a gash in marble.

“Now, I don’t know who you think you are,” Dante begins, quite amiably. “But if you think for one moment you can imply that I am not happy that my brother and my nephew have found each other, and if you think that I would not give up _everything_ I had to let them be happy,” – faint scarlet scales flicker around his eyes, as his voice deepens in a faint echo of his demon form – “You would be asking for death.” There is shuttered pain there, hidden among determined, bitter fury.

The therapist’s gaze skirts over Dante’s slit-like pupils, the faint scales rippling just under his skin, and she nods. There is something in her gaze that shows understanding at last.

And Vergil, watching the faint, burning scales slowly fade under his brother’s skin, thinks that he too begins to understand.

–Dante, eating alone, halfway through a cold pizza when Vergil lets himself in after a light-filled day with Nero–

–the way Dante leans away from Vergil’s every touch now, as though steeling himself for a separation that has yet to come–

–piles of empty beer cans on the table, untouched pizza in the fridge, too-quick smiles and averted gazes, Dante flinching as Vergil cleans the wound in his leg, terrible jokes at his own pain pouring endlessly from between Dante’s cracked lips–

Vergil realises with increasing dismay that Dante’s hand has clenched into a fist at his side, a mere fingersbreath from Vergil’s hand, but Dante still has not reached for him.

There is pain wrought into the easy line of Dante’s shoulders.

_If you think I would not give up everything I had to let them be happy–_

“Dante,” Vergil whispers. His heart is breaking.

Perhaps it is something in Vergil’s voice, but Dante looks up and meets his gaze for the first time the entire session, a fiery, impenetrable wall in Dante’s eyes.

“Dante,” Vergil says, feeling a strangled note crawl into his voice despite his best efforts. “I’m so sorry.”

Something cracks in Dante’s gaze; like glass shattering asunder. His smile slips.

“What the hell are you apologizing for, dumbass?” he says, voice light, but towards the end of the sentence a telltale tremble scatters the syllables, makes the humour fall flat.

Vergil looks at his younger brother, who had supported him through his weakest, most vulnerable days after the dome, who had held him when he had broken again and again, whom Vergil had always thought unbreakable.

He opens his mouth to speak, and Dante looks away.

Vergil falls silent, aching.

“I think we should stop here for today,” the therapist is saying, and Dante is off the sofa in a flash of scarlet and through the door almost before the receptionist has it open.

Vergil looks towards the therapist. “How do I…” he falters.

“Show him the same patience and love he has shown you when you were struggling,” the therapist says, smiling kindly at him. “And if words fail, actions speak louder.”

Vergil nods, and follows his brother.

“Not for the moment, Nero,” he murmurs as Nero jogs to catch up with a frown on his face. “I will call you later.”

It is a testament to how far they have come together that Nero simply nods in acceptance.

They pause together when the reach the top of the stairs until Vergil spots Dante’s distinctive crimson sweater, already halfway down the street. Nero gives Vergil a brief farewell hug that Vergil returns gladly before Nero slips away into the crowd.

Vergil takes a breath of the cold afternoon air, and sets off after his brother.

(:~:)

Vergil finally tracks down Dante at an open-air seaside café on the far side of a park.

Dante looks up briefly at his brother’s approach before continuing to demolish the biggest strawberry sundae Vergil has ever seen.

“Ice cream in winter?” Vergil says, lowering himself into the seat opposite his brother.

“Every season is strawberry sundae season,” Dante says with the ghost of his usual humour, as he takes another massive spoonful. His gaze is fixed on the sundae before him and nothing else.

Vergil considers how best to approach the subject, but in the end the chatter of the café’s patrons is too loud and the sea wind too chilled, so he reaches out and steals a strawberry instead.

Dante’s spoon pauses halfway into the ice cream as Vergil plucks the strawberry from under his nose.

–and then Dante brings the spoon to his lips and continues to eat without a care, and Vergil feels the strawberry curdle to terror in his stomach.

“Dante, please,” Vergil whispers.

“You don’t have to do this, you know,” Dante says, almost casually.

“Do what?”

“Pity me,” Dante says, around another spoonful of ice cream. “It’s going to happen, anyway. I’m just preparing for it.”

“Dante,” Vergil says quietly, “I’ve been neglecting you. I apologise. I’m not– I’m not going to leave you.”

“Don’t,” Dante says, voice so sharp it stabs physically into Vergil’s chest. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep. Don’t make it worse.”

The winter sunlight shines bright on both their silver-haired heads, fractures into fractals through the glass of the nearly empty sundae cup.

Dante weighs down a few bills under the sundae cup and stands. He gets up and begins to walk, hands buried in his pockets.

Vergil follows wordlessly until they reach a quieter area, and opens up a portal with the Yamato.

Dante goes upstairs the moment their boots leave snow for wooden floorboards, and comes down in full battle gear, sliding Ebony and Ivory into their holsters at his back, eyes shadowed.

“Dante,” Vergil says, catching his brother by the back of the shoulder as Dante makes for the door.

“I’m going hunting,” Dante says, with no inflection at all. He does not turn his head.

“Don’t be a fool, Dante,” Vergil says, tightening his grasp on his brother’s shoulder. “You’re not fully recovered.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time. I’ll manage.” Dante shrugs off Vergil’s hand.

Vergil blinks, stung, but swallows the hurt. “Then I’m coming with you.” His left hand drifts to the Yamato on his hip.

Dante’s knuckles turn white on the door handle. “Vergil, please stop,” he says, voice hard.

“Dante, I sorry if I–”

“It’s not you, okay?” Dante says. His head turns minutely, so the edge of his too-bright smile just catches the afternoon light. “I’m really, really happy for you and Nero. You’re right in putting him first. It’s my fault I can’t deal with being alone again.”

There, watching his brother’s smile twist against the sunlight, Vergil realises with a terrifying surge of dread that Dante truly believes that Vergil will leave him.

_No._

Breath stuttering in his chest, Vergil reaches for his brother again, but Dante twists away.

“I’m okay,” Dante says, and his smile is like glass, wrought by a master craftsman with decades of practice – a perfect mimicry of contentment, but utterly fragile. “I’m going to be okay, Vergil. You don’t have to worry about me. I can deal with it. I always do, in the end.”

“Dante,” Vergil whispers, pain lancing up from his chest to his throat, choking through the word.

“So just–” Dante takes one long step back from Vergil’s reach, stumbling a little on his injured leg. He is looking Vergil dead in the eye now, his own gaze raw. “Just leave me be. I just need to prepare myself a little. You don’t need to feel like you have to help me. Nero needs you.”

“I’m not leaving you,” Vergil says, forcing his voice to remain steady. “Neither Nero or I will leave you.”

Vergil catches sight of a hopeless longing in Dante’s gaze – as though Dante cannot bring himself to believe what he so desperately wishes for.

“Do you really believe that?” Dante whispers hollowly.

“Yes,” Vergil says immediately. “I do.”

“I wish I did,” Dante says, and disappears through the door in a gust of frozen air.

Vergil stands there alone, in the warm gold of the afternoon light, and feels utterly, completely helpless in the face of his brother’s grief.

(:~:)

The afternoon fades to evening, and the gentle snowfall of the sunset hours turns into a howling blizzard.

At first, Vergil sits to wait with a book of poetry in his hands. But when the wind rises to a scream and the very air seems to turn to ice, seeping through the closed windows and hissing through the gaps in the doorframe, he finds even Blake’s words blurring in his vision.

He abandons the volume beside the silent phone and paces the length of the shop as the lights flicker overhead, his hand on the Yamato and growing terror in his chest.

Vergil waits, and waits, the clack of his boots against the bloated floorboards echoing in the empty hours, the weight of his long, dark blue coat swinging over the frozen air, until he can wait no more.

His next step takes him past the worn line he has been tracking into the floorboards, his stride lengthening into a run as he reaches for the door–

–only to slide to a halt as the door almost opens in his face.

Vergil flings up a hand to protect his eyes from the torrent of frozen crystals that surges into the room through the open door, gasping in a breath so cold that it knives him from within.

The wind stops abruptly.

Vergil lowers his hand, blinking the stinging ice from his vision, and finds his brother smiling at him.

Or someone that might be Dante, under all that snow and frozen blood. There is a the remnant of a cut on Dante’s cheek, healed over but the blood flash-frozen in a scarlet smear against his temple. His hair is lined with ice-crystals, brilliantly white against his silver-white hair, and there are lines of dried blood at Dante’s chin where his own hair must have drawn lashes against his exposed skin in the cold.

Every inch of Dante not covered in ice and cracking leather is dripping slowly with congealed blood.

New terror crashes down on Vergil, turning his limbs to lead.

Dante quirks a bright smile at him, and a frozen, utterly dry skin of Dante’s lower lip cracks open.

“Dante,” Vergil chokes in horror as a new line of fresh blood seeps down through Dante’s unshaven beard.

Dante barks a laugh, and lifts a filthy glove to swipe roughly at his lip. “Eh,” he comments, looking down at his scarlet-stained fingers. “You didn’t have to wait up for me, Vergil,” he says cheerfully as he wipes his fingers carelessly on his shirt. Each syllable reopens the wound, sends fresh droplets dripping down on his ruined clothing, and Dante glances down at the scarlet stains for a moment before shrugging and striding towards the fridge.

“Dante,” Vergil repeats, and hears the plea in his own voice as he stumbles after his brother. He notes with detached horror that Dante’s left leg is dragging a little behind him as he moves, and there is a suspiciously dark stain right over the healing wound on his thigh.

Dante’s fingers leave red smears on the white surface of the fridge as he pulls a beer from its depths.

“Seriously, go to sleep,” Dante says airily as he cracks open the can with a filthy finger. “Don’t wait up on my account.”

Vergil watches, terrified, as Dante brings the can to his lips and throws back the beer in one long draw, alcohol seeping through the gaping cut on his lower lip, turning the trail of congealing blood on his chin pale pink.

It has to hurt like hell.

Dante does not even flinch.

Dante lets the empty can drop from his fingers to clatter against the floor, wipes his mouth with the back of a filthy glove, and bends to open the fridge again.

Vergil takes one long step forward into Dante’s space and pushes the fridge door shut.

“Dante,” he says, reaching for his brother’s shoulder, “This isn’t like you.”

A flash of crimson leather is all Vergil registers before the crack of his spine against the brick wall smashes the breath from his lungs.

The air escapes from between his lips in a shuddering wheeze, and he feels the rough surface of the wall scrape against his shoulder blades as his demon powers take over, smoothing over the hairline fractures in his spine.

Dante’s hands are fisted in Vergil’s collar, and Vergil’s vision is full of his brother’s white hair where Dante has bowed his head over his hands, as though he cannot fight any longer.

 _“Please,”_ Dante whispers into Vergil’s shirt, and Vergil hears the cracking edge in his brother’s voice, a trembling dam against yet unshed tears. _“Please just go.”_

Then, quick as they came, Dante’s hands are gone from Vergil’s collar, and Dante is twisting away towards the stairs, stumbling over his injured leg.

Vergil hastens forward when Dante’s leg buckles on the first step, but Dante flings up a hand without looking back, and Vergil stops in his tracks.

Dante heaves himself up the stairs, step by bloody step, bright drops of blood splattering against the wood, as Vergil stands there, frozen, listening to the sound of his brother’s teeth grinding against the pain.

Then Dante turns the corner into the upstairs corridor, and Vergil hears the snap of Dante’s door closing behind him.

Vergil stands in the pocket of silence that remains, and wonders why the world is not howling along with the screaming in his mind.

He does not–

He does not know what to do.

He is not Dante, who knows how to comfort as easily as breathing; who sees through Vergil almost more clearly than Vergil knows himself.

He is Vergil, who only recently learned how to speak without wounding with every word, whose quest for power nearly cost him his son and his brother, both at once.

“Mother,” Vergil whispers.

He recalls the red silk sleeves of his mother’s favourite housecoat closing around him, warming him, wiping away his tears.

It is a cruel trick of fate that Dante had been the only one to inherit their mother’s talent for kindness and comfort, when Vergil so desperately needs to comfort his brother now.

Then he remembers.

_When words fail, actions speak louder._

The words carry his nerveless feet up the stairs, past the copper coins of his brother’s blood. They lift his hand to wrap around the stained doorknob of his brother’s door, and allows him to pick his way across the scattered debris of Dante’s room to his brother’s side.

Dante is lying on his side on top of the covers, facing the wall, crimson coat and ruined boots discarded on the floor. His blood-soaked hair glows red and silver in the moonlight.

Vergil looks at the sheets, at the bloodstains that mar them, at his brother’s grime-soaked shirt.

He comes to a decision.

Vergil takes off his own long, pristine blue coat, folding it neatly. He looks about for a cleaner spot, and sets the coat on a mildly dusty box of records by his feet.

Then he shucks his boots, takes a single step forward, and climbs into bed beside his brother.

Dante’s sharp inhale is a palpable thing as Vergil shifts close, pulling the coverlet out from under them and settling the warm blankets over them both.

Vergil wraps his arm around his brother’s middle, uncaring for the black and crimson stains that instantly blossom on the sleeve of his white dress shirt, and presses his face into the back of his brother’s dirty hair.

Dante’s hair smells like dried demon blood. Vergil does not care.

Dante begins to shake in earnest, shoulders shuddering against Vergil’s chest. He turns his face further into the pillow as though trying to hide, but Vergil only curls closer.

“I’m here,” Vergil whispers, reaching up to tuck one filthy strand of white-silver hair behind his brother’s ear before tightening his arm around Dante again. “I have you.”

Dante’s breath turns to stifled sobs.

Vergil leans his cheek into the back of Dante’s neck wordlessly, and holds him steady until Dante’s hitching gasps turn to the long, even breaths of sleep at last.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter: Lots and lots of brotherly and father-son fluff to make up for this, and a Sparda Christmas.
> 
> Apologies for not finishing up replying to comments yet! I've moved to a new department in the past two weeks and I'm seeing so many patients I barely have time for lunch between clinic sessions. I'll be replying to everyone's comments tomorrow. Rest assured I hold you all very dear to my heart. <3


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